


Bound To You

by FireSoul



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Resurrection, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, season 1 rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2019-11-15 20:02:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 70,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18080006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireSoul/pseuds/FireSoul
Summary: After a long life of the universe torturing him Leonard Snart finally finds the person who corresponds with his soul mark... thirty seconds after she dies. It's just another thing on the long list of crap deals he's been dealt by fate, he isn't going to dwell on it, he didn't even know her.But, and maybe he's as crazy as her sister, maybe he could still have a chance.





	1. Out of Nowhere

Leonard is fairly certain that he’s lost the cops by now, but just to be sure he takes one more cautionary turn down an old backstreet, practically an alley. He normally has rules against celebrating a job before it’s officially over; limiting Mick, Lisa, and anyone else he works with to one whooping cheer of success when they first jump into the getaway car. But he’s alone here, no one to give him crap, and the cops in Star City are such jokes that he can’t help the smile spreading across his face; he’s home free.

Spoke too soon.

The street is dark, and he isn’t using headlights because, you know, evading arrest here. The most warning that he gets is the quickest of shadows appearing above his windshield before the glass shatters and he’s slamming on the breaks.

It’s all a blur.

His airbag deploys, not so much due to him hitting anything but more to the massive… whatever, that has smashed through his windshield and slammed against the steering wheel. The mystery object is more or less in his lap, he thinks, he isn’t sure. All he knows is he’s suffering from whiplash and there’s a burning ach in his chest that he’s attributing to the object’s harsh landing. Oh, and there is suddenly something dry and stringy in his mouth. Straw? Why the hell is there straw in his mouth? And he smells something, an overwhelming scent of copper. Blood. He knows the scent of blood, unmistakable, and this is it.

Fumbling through the blur, and trying not to panic when he realizes his hand is brushing against some sort of leather clad limb, he manages to get the car into park so that he can better assess the situation. He pushes the… the body, it is definitely a body, away from his face. That straw in his mouth isn’t straw at all, but matted blonde hair. Matted with blood. There’s a blonde wig lying in the corner of what had been the windshield, slipping into the car. He doesn’t focus too hard on that, instead bringing his attention back to the lifeless person lying in his lap.

It’s a woman, dressed all in black with a lopsided eye mask falling off her face. There isn’t much blood on her visible skin; it’s all at the back of her head and soaking into his pants.

Whatever blood isn’t there is pouring out around the three arrows lodged from her chest to her abdomen.

Her blue eyes are wide and hollow, her skin pale; there would be no point in calling for help. She’s dead.

She’s dead, and his chest is still burning.

His chest is still burning, and she has three arrows sticking out of hers, in the exact same places he has always had three grey blobs marked on his own skin. Which, again, is burning.

Shit.

He knows that talk about soul marks feeling as though they’re on fire when a soulmate dies is far from being a load of bull. He’s seen it. According to Mick the burning stops after a couple hours, but the ache never really goes away. It’s always there, keeping him up at night, haunting him.

Leonard has tried to imagine it before, but if what he’s feeling now is to serve as any indication, he hasn’t even come close.

As the minutes tick by and the situation seeps in he starts to think a little more clearly. Soulmate or not he has a body lying bloody across his front seat, partially in his lap. He needs to do something about it. Calling the cops isn’t an option, for obvious reasons, and given how she’s dressed he kind of doubts this woman would’ve wanted him calling the cops for her anyway.

The ache in his chest deepens with that thought, because he has no way of knowing that for sure. She’s his soulmate, and yet he’ll never really know who she is… or, rather, who she was.

He has to get out of the car, that’s as good a first move as any. He needs some air, he needs to breathe and once he can do that he’ll be able to think. He opens up the door and then carefully, oh so careful not to disturb his newfound… development, he slips out of his seat and stands on the solid ground.

He takes in a breath, the dirty air of the city oddly refreshing, but he only gets the one breath before he turns his head and his eyes land on a woman, this one very much alive.

She’s standing only a few feet from his car, fearful eyes locked onto him and breath visibly hitched. Her hands are clinging tightly to the long strap of her purse, though it appears to be more out of some sort self comfort than any actual fear of him. No, the fear in her eyes isn’t for him. It’s for her; the woman who fell through his windshield.

He glances over at the car, a glance that she follows, and then back to her with all the pain that looking at that body brings him showing in his eyes.

She takes a step forward, hesitant, and when he doesn’t move she quickens her pace until she is all but running to the car. She pushes past him and throws the driver’s door open, and then lets out a mix of a sob, a gasp, and a scream.

That mix soon carries over into the sob winning out, her body doubling over and with little more than one fleeting thought Leonard finds himself surging forward to catch her around her middle before she collapses completely. She turns in his arms, her face burying in his chest along with her hands and all he can think to do is hold her steady as he can as they both sink to their knees.

“Sara,” he hears the choked name come through her tears. “Sara, Sara…”

She trails off, sobbing even harder at this point and murmuring the name like it’s the only word she knows. A part of him is trying to determine whether the name is hers or that of the soulmate in his windshield.

Somewhere in him he already knows the answer.

“Sara.” He whispers, the name foreign on his tongue, and he holds the woman tighter as she continues to sob.

He eventually asks the woman, Laurel, what they should do with Sara. At first she doesn’t look as though she exactly wants him involved, but instead of acting on that she asks if he minds driving them somewhere. He obliges, of course, and she lets herself into the back while he gets back into the driver’s seat, disturbing Sara as minimally as possible.

Even if that means driving with her head in his lap.

He isn’t sure where he’s expecting Laurel to direct him, and while he’s a little anxious it will be a police station he doesn’t voice that. If she wants them to go there then so be it, he’ll drop her at the front door, grab his loot from the foot of the passenger’s seat, and ditch the car before she comes back with someone to move the body. But it isn’t a police station that she directs him to; it’s a bar.

“Um…” He doesn’t know what else to say as Laurel gets out of the car and looks at him apologetically, a look he only catches in the rearview mirror.

“It’s a long story.” That’s as close to an explanation as he is probably going to get, and really it’s all he needs.

She goes for the passenger door just as he gets out.

“Thank you,” she says as she gets the door open before he can try and stop her.

Oh well, something about all this tells him the duffle bag at the base of that seat isn’t going to be high on her list of concerns.

He nods and comes around to her side, her stepping out of his way so he can reach in and gather Sara in his arms. He can sense the surprise on her face, but she doesn’t say anything to stop him. Instead she waits patiently for him to have a hold on Sara and then shuts the door once she’s out and in no danger of being hit; then she moves to get the door into the bar.

The place is empty, thank God, though he doubts Laurel would have directed them here if it weren’t. She looks around for a moment, understandably frazzled, before she starts moving tables together and instructs him to lay Sara across them.  
“Are you sure the owner won’t be mad about us leaving a dead body on his tables?” He asks, only partially sarcastic, even as he sets Sara down.

“I’m sure he’ll forgive me,” Laurel mutters, her eyes glued to Sara as he steps back.

He keeps his eyes on Sara as well. It turns his stomach how this is the first proper look he’s gotten at her, laid out on three bar tables with blood drying into her soaked corset and her eyes shot open.

Soulmate or not, he really feels terrible that he’s been this involved with moving her body and had no real idea of what she looks like until now.

“Thank you. Again.” Laurel says a little awkwardly and he nods to her, and in the process he catches a glimpse of all the blood smeared on him.

“Um,” Laurel hums, obviously noticing the problem as well. “There’s a bathroom…” She vaguely points towards the back, but he shakes his head.

“It’s ok,” he says, his fingers curling and uncurling in anxious fists, dried blood cracking along his joints. He has so many questions, but he doesn’t know if he should ask any of them. He doesn’t think he has a right to ask any of them. Maybe if Laurel knew about his mark…

But that isn’t his place.

And even if it were, this is definitely not the time.

He never knew Sara, and the last thing Laurel needs right now is some sort of misplaced guilt over that. It will be easier for her if he’s just a willing accomplice and nothing more.

“Are you going to be ok here?” He asks and though her eyes are still watery with tears she nods.

“Yeah,” she promises, “Yeah I’ll be fine.”

He nods, and glances back to Sara one more time. Wherever her soul mark is her clothes cover it, and he absently wonders what it looks like. Soul marks don’t always make sense at first, he doubts if he had ever met her before tonight that either of them would have understood the significance of his mark. No one really understands how they work. Everyone is born with one, and the most widely accepted theory is that you’re mark is a match to a significant one that your soulmate will one day acquire, through one means or another.

Well, death is certainly a significant one.

He supposes it doesn’t matter now, not really, not as anything more than some strange science to dwell on when he can’t sleep over the next few days. So without another word he starts to leave the bar, off to find one that’s open.

“Wait.”

Until Laurel calls him back.

He turns, one eyebrow raised, and she doesn’t look like she meant to speak. He could turn back around, make it clear that he’s going to leave; she probably wouldn’t stop him.

“Yes?” He asks instead, because as much as he’s trying to quash it there is a feeling of… something, rising inside him. It’s curiosity at the very least, and he doesn’t want to examine what it might be at the very best.

“What… Why… You just helped me hide a body.” She gapes, her hands settling on her hips. He takes a glance around the bar while she stares him down, very obviously trying to make sense of his actions.

“If on display in the middle of an open room is your idea of hiding something… I really hope you’re not a detective.”

Or a cop, just on principal, but that doesn’t seem likely.

“You know what I mean.”

Ah, lawyer, or something close to it based on the expression she’s giving him. That would explain the business clothes.

“Can’t say that I do,” he returns, shrugging and hooking into his thumbs casually into his pockets. He has a few options here, each with their own varying levels of stupidity. He knows it’s best to play it safe and give her only the barest minimum amount of information about who he is, preferably none at all.

So cold abandonment it is.

He turns to continue on his way without another word, fully aware that she’s less than pleased with the action but content to live with that. She had barely meant to speak the first time; she isn’t going to call him back again.

“Leonard Snart.”

Or maybe she is.

He turns around again, more annoyed this time, but where he’s annoyed she’s downright pissed. That look she’s giving him, those pursed lips and that faintly scrunched nose, and those daggers shooting out of her eyes. Oh, that’s the face of a lawyer alright, a lawyer who’s read his file and could pick him out in a crowd even if she wasn’t looking for him.

Shit.

“Yes?” He asks, more exasperated than anything. He can admit when he’s lost, doesn’t mean he’s happy about it.

“A woman crashed through your windshield tonight, and then I showed up and asked you to take her dead body to a bar.”

“To be fair, you didn’t mention where we were going while I was driving.”

“And that’s better?” She nearly snaps. They stare each other down for maybe a second before she rolls her eyes and runs her hands through her hair in frustration.

She’s starting to break all over again. Sara, whoever Sara is to her, is dead and she doesn’t know why. There are three arrows sticking out of her chest, and Laurel doesn’t know why. She also doesn’t know why he helped her, and she needs to get answers to _something_ that’s happened tonight.

“Look, I don’t care or want to know what you’re doing in Star City. But why did you go along with this?” She asks, “Why didn’t you just throw Sara on the side of the road and leave us there?”

He could still lie to her, easily, but he can see the desperation on her face as well as hear it in her voice.

Fuck.

He walks forward almost violently, every bit of his better instinct screaming for him to stop, but damn it she has some answers for him to, and the only way he’s going to get them is by giving in to her.

He stops just short of her and shrugs off his jacket, and when her face turns from angry to confused he keeps his glare on her hard and murderous. He understands she’s been through a lot tonight, but if she makes one move too far or says one wrong thing he will kill her, and he needs to make sure she knows that. He pulls off his sweater, then his long sleeved undershirt, and then the tank top style one. Under any other circumstances he would be much more worried about her reaction to his scars, but he knows those won’t be what she focuses on.

And he’s right.

She gasps, the sound loud in the otherwise quiet bar, and her eyes lock on the faint grey blobs that decorate his chest, and match the entry points of Sara’s wounds. One of her hands moves over her mouth, the fingers of the other twitching forward for a millisecond but thankfully she knows that’s a boundary he has zero intentions of letting her cross. Finally, her eyes move back to his, her hands slowly sliding back to her sides.

He gathers his layers from the chair he’s thrown them onto, yanking them back on almost as aggressively as he’d pulled them off. Laurel is still speechless even after his jacket is back on.

“Who is she to you?” It’s really the only question he has, and considering what he’s just shown her, he thinks he’s more than earned the right to the answer.

“Uh… My, my sister.” She stutters, disbelief still on her face.

He pauses in zipping up his jacket, not really surprised, at this point it’s the most logical explanation. But still, hearing it sets a whole new type of pain in his chest, he doesn’t want to try and imagine what she’s going through right now.

“Do you… do you want to see her mark?”

He shakes his head as soon as he’s registered the words. It feels wrong, having Laurel show him something so personal of Sara’s, even if it was supposed to lead her to him.

“No, that’s ok.” He tells her, “Just uh… Just let me know when the funeral is.”

He starts walking away before he can regret that, and before she can say anything more. As he walks for the door he keeps waiting for her to call him back again, to have one more thing to say to him.

She doesn’t.

She lets him go, out into the night and into his car still parked in the alley. Suddenly the whole night washes over him and he feels like he’s been up for weeks. He climbs into the driver’s seat and digs the key out of his pocket, raising his hand slowly towards the ignition, and then giving up with a deep sigh.

He folds his arms over the top of the steering wheel, leaning his head against it in defeat.

He doesn’t cry. He didn’t know Sara to cry for her. But the ache is still there in his chest, like it will be for the rest of his days, and he wonders if Laurel knows he doesn’t drive away until hours have passed.


	2. You Roped Me In

Mick was right; the ache doesn’t go away.

He doesn’t sleep that night, or what’s left of it, and he’s a little surprised he makes it all the way back to Central City in the following days, thanks in no small part to an unhealthy amount of coffee.

Thankfully there’s no one home when he makes it back to the safe house, a true mercy considering he’s been planning a job. He flops onto the couch with an exhausted groan, but he still doesn’t sleep. He can’t. Every time he closes his eyes he sees her. Sara. Her blue eyes wide and void of life, her body a blur falling off a high rise. What was she even doing up there?

Actually, after three days of driving alone with no other thoughts running through his mind, he thinks he’s figured that much out.

He’s heard reports over the past two years about the Starling City Arrow, and more recently the mystery woman in black. It doesn’t take a genius to put that together.

His soulmate was a hero. Even with her dead he finds the thought laughable, maybe them meeting in life wouldn’t have gone over so well.

At some point he must have passed out from the exhaustion, because he wakes up to a heavy door slamming closed and footsteps clunking towards him.

“Thought you went to Starling?”

It’s Joey, a half decent thief he talked to during his last stint in Iron Heights. Not his first choice to work with, but Lisa still has a few more weeks left to serve on her latest sentence, and he’s trying to keep Mick out of his plans, for now anyway.

“Just got back.” He drawls, sitting himself up and getting to his feet all in one motion. “The last of our tools are in that bag over there.”

Joey nods, moving over to the table he’s indicated. Leonard follows him and watches as he starts pulling the rifles from the duffle, inspecting the first one with mild interest and then simply piling the other two on top of it.

“I don’t see why you had to go all the way to Starling to get these, what’s wrong with the guns we’ve got here?”

“You don’t hit a baseball with a lamp.” He answers coldly, quickly, in a way that has Joey eyeing him with an almost offended look.

“So, everything’s going to go according to plan?”

He doesn’t have the patience for this on a good day, never mind a day when he’s running on no sleep and more grief than he feels is justifiable for someone he didn’t know.

“Yes.” He deadpans, “Everything will go according to plan.”

Except it doesn’t.

He spends the two weeks he has between getting back from Starling and running the job planning it out meticulously, more so than usual. He couldn’t predict what the universe dropped on his car in Starling, but he can predict his next job. Everything about it. Where the truck will be, and when. The response time of the cops. He can make sure that it all goes according to plan.

He timed everything right. Down to the nanosecond, his calculations were perfect. They had the right weapons, the truck, the armor. Everything. He was prepared for every possible obstacle.

Where in lies the problem; he wasn’t prepared for the impossible.

A man moving at the speed of sound, nothing but a blur to the naked eye, that is what screwed up his plans.

This has been a weird month.

Fine, he can adjust to weird; he’s just going to need a partner to keep him sane.

He runs one quick job himself, if making yourself a superhero’s newest arch nemesis can be considered quick. He does it in twenty-four hours, so he thinks it’s quick. After that he takes his newly acquired weapons and is off to recruit Mick, who is eager as ever to throw in with him. Good, maybe things can start to get back to normal.

Then again, what is normal for him?

Actually, with the addition of now having to be on the lookout for superhumans, his life does pretty much find it’s way back to his version of normal. He and Mick plan jobs, sometimes they include Lisa, and they evade the police. Normal. He tells Mick about Sara during one late night of planning, if only because he knows his partner will understand and also because Mick told him when his soulmate died.

He never met his soulmate at all, the ache just started one day, and now that Leonard knows what it feels like he’s trying to imagine not having been there. If he had just stayed in Central that weekend, if the ache had suddenly woke him up in the middle of the night, no windshield crashing to lead him to the source of his pain.

He’s not sure he could handle that.

Mick doesn’t say anything about it though; they aren’t like that. Instead he raises his beer and welcomes him to the “dead soulmates club”, and that’s the last they speak of it.

It isn’t the last that he thinks of Sara, of course. He is always acutely aware of the dull ache in chest, resonating from his mark. There’s nothing he can do for it, Mick’s already tried it all; from pain pills to attempting to burn the mark off. So he learns to live with it, and he does his damnedest to keep from thinking about that night.

That is something usually harder in prison, but then again, today has been one hell of a day.

He finally did it. He finally killed Lewis.

He keeps replaying the moment in his mind, the feelings still fresh and near overwhelming. There is a little bit of sadness amongst all the relief, Lewis was still his father and so there was once a time where he believed the fantasy of killing him was beyond sin, not that he isn’t one of the most damned sinners there is.

He’s still thinking about it when a guard comes to his cell for the second time today.

“You’re a lucky man Snart,” the guard, who doesn’t look pleased about having come up here again, says as he fits his key into the cell lock. “They’re letting you go.”

Now that’s something he certainly didn’t see coming.

He isn’t complaining, not in the least, but he is understandably confused as he walks with the guard down to processing. Bail isn’t Mick or Lisa’s style, and while he wouldn’t put it past Barry that headache already came to visiting and tried convincing him to be a hero, like that’s ever going to happen. He’s still confused throughout the process of release and obtaining his things, still trying to figure out who might be behind this.

He never would’ve guessed even if he had a hundred years.

When he walks out that door and into the lobby of the prison there’s a woman waiting for him, a woman whom he hasn’t seen in over a year.

Laurel.

He nods to her, and the look in her eyes is every bit determined as it is wary. They don’t say a word as he signs his final release papers and then follows her out, but once they’re outside the building she pulls herself over to the side and checks her hip against the outer wall, keeping in full view of the security cameras.

Smart.

“You never called me about the funeral.” He drawls, not entirely sure how else to go about this as he leans himself across from her.

“Well you’re not exactly an easy guy to find.” She counters quickly, “In fact, if you hadn’t been arrested this morning I might have been out of luck today.”

He doesn’t know what exactly it is about that sentence that’s putting him on edge, and maybe it isn’t even the sentence but more the challenging look in her eye.

It’s probably both.

“Why were you looking for me?”

Her eyes flit away from him for only the briefest fraction of a second, but it’s more than enough to double the heavy feeling of dread in his stomach.

“It’s Sara.” She says, “I… It’s a long story but I... I think I’ve found a way to bring her back.”

He does nothing except for stare at her at first, which for the record is a totally understandable response to have considering a woman he barely knows has just gotten him out of jail and started talking to him about raising the dead.

“I’m sorry, but did you not see the three arrows sticking out of her chest?” He eventually manages to say, and Laurel huffs, annoyed.

“I’m serious Snart.”

“I can see that,” he counters, and she rolls her eyes at him.

“Look, I can explain everything on the way, but this will work.”

The way she’s looking at him is almost pleading, and it isn’t often that he finds himself at a loss for how to respond in any given situation, but he genuinely has no idea what to do here. He has just in the past twenty-four hours learned exactly how far he is willing to go for Lisa, and he doesn’t want to think about what his mental state would be had Lewis hit that button. Losing his sister, it would’ve sent him over the edge, so he can only imagine what Laurel’s been through in the past year.

“What is _this_ , exactly?” He asks, shoving his hands down into his pockets.

Laurel looks uncomfortable, her eyes flitting to the street, taking a second or two to watch the cars driving by before she looks back at him.

“It’s complicated, and I can explain on the way.” She answers him, the pleading look in her eyes almost doubling.

There are a few different things that he could do right now that would be a good response. One might be to ask her if she’s ok. Another, though more extreme, might be to walk right back into Iron Heights and ask the person at the desk for a good place to get a psych referral. Maybe he could bring her to S.T.A.R. Labs; if Sara was really a vigilante then she might have known The Arrow, who he knows Barry knows, so it would make sense Laurel knows Barry or at the very least Barry and his team know who Laurel is.

But, also on that note, Barry is living proof that the impossible can happen.

So, after carefully considering all of his options, he nods to Laurel.

“Ok.”

* * *

 

Whatever explanation he was expecting, and for the record he didn’t have much in mind, it certainly wasn’t this. She’s brought him to the airport, where her friend Thea is waiting for them in private Merlyn Global jet that the two of them more or less stole, though he would hardly call it steeling considering Thea is apparently Malcolm Merlyn’s daughter.

The universe really had a twisted sense of humor when it decided his soulmate.

“Who’s this?” He hears the question as he enters the jet before he sees the woman who’s asked it.

She’s shorter than Laurel, and stick skinny, but he can tell by the way her arms are folded over herself and how she stands as soon as the door is open that she isn’t someone he would want to cross.

Or at the very least, he would want to consider it very carefully.

“Sara’s soulmate.” Laurel says like it’s nothing, before she then looks over her shoulder at him and then back at the other woman. “Leonard, this is Thea. Thea, Leonard.”

Thea studies him for only the tiniest fraction of a second before her now wide eyes are back on Laurel.

“Um… What? Where… How…?” She trails off with that, her hands moving in every which direction as though she is trying to grab onto whatever words it is she’s looking for, before she finally sighs and sinks back into her seat. “Ok.”

“I think what the princess is trying to say is, why am I here?”

He puts his attention back on Laurel with the question, who is buckling into her own seat. He doesn’t miss the nasty look Thea is throwing him, nor does he care really. Still, he is intrigued as to why he’s here, so he follows Laurel’s example and buckles himself into a seat that allows him to be able to see both her and Thea.

“You’re her soulmate.” She reminds him, “I thought you’d like to be there.”

“Except I didn’t know her.”

“You wanted to be at the funeral.”

He can see why she became a lawyer.

If there is one thing that has served him well over the years, it’s been his ability to know when he’s beat. He isn’t beat yet, necessarily, but he also can’t deny that there is a small part of him that sort of would like to be there.

He’s never been one for relationships; in fact he’s always viewed that mark on his chest as more of a hindrance than a promise of something good. It always seemed like a reminder that, someday, someone would come along and put the plans for his latest heist in danger. But Sara, with the little he knows about her, well he can’t say he isn’t intrigued.

“Fine.” He relents, leaning back in his seat. “So where exactly are we going?”

Thea and Laurel exchange an anxious looking glance at that question, but Laurel is determined, as if that hasn’t been made clear already.

“The Hindu Kush Mountains.” She says, and ok, after being bailed out, the talk about resurrection, and the private jet, he really didn’t think she was going to find a way to throw him for yet another loop. But that…

“There’s a city located there, Nanda Parbat. It’s home to The League of Assassins, who among other things are the keepers of the Lazarus Pit; a pool with healing properties. It brought Thea back from the brink of death and we think it can bring back Sara.”

“Except Sara’s been dead for over a year.” He reminds her, “And even if that weren’t the case, what makes you think these assassins are just going to let you waltz in and use their magic pool?”

Laurel, for the record, doesn’t really seem worried about that fact.

“Sara was one of their own, they’ll help.”

Of course she was. His soulmate, who is currently but may not be permanently dead, was an assassin, a high society lawyer’s sister, and possibly a vigilante. Sure, why not?

 

* * *

 

Once they land in Nanda Parbat Thea somehow manages to convince two of the guards to bring Sara’s coffin to a back room, pulling the “boss’s daughter” card no doubt, because apparently the head of The League of Assassins is her father. At this point, Leonard wouldn’t expect anything less.

“Why don’t you go with her?” Laurel suggests to him while the two guards are unloading the coffin from the plane.

“Why, don’t trust me?” He asks with a tilt of his head. Laurel looks almost offended by the suggestion, to which he smirks.

“Smart.” He drawls, and without another word he breaks away from her to follow the guards.

Neither of them acknowledges his presence trailing behind them, but in the home of The League of Assassins he’s not so stupid to think they couldn’t kill him in an instant for even a slight misstep.

The “city” of Nanda Parbat is actually one giant temple carved into the mountainside, the halls lit by a combination of natural light and torches hung on the walls. Eventually the guards enter into a room at the end of the hall. It’s mostly empty, aside from a multitude of candles and a cushion with pillows over in the corner. Nothing he could pocket and walk out of here with, pity.

Oh, there’s one more thing in the room, in the dead center: a wooden bench.

The guards set the coffin down on this bench, and then without a word to him they leave.

Well, this certainly isn’t where he thought he would be today.

He takes a stroll around the room, checking out every inch of it with the critical eye of a master thief, making sure his initial inspection hasn’t missed any small item that he could smuggle out with him.

There isn’t anything, unfortunately, and eventually he finds that he’s standing just next to the reason he’s here in the first place.

He comes to a standstill, his arms folded one over the other as he looks down at the coffin, the colored light pouring in from the stained-glass window above making the whole place look more like a tomb than a simple back room.

Then again, maybe the guards know this is a bad idea and they did bring him into a tomb.

“You know, I always figured that when it came to soulmates, I was going to be the one with explaining to do.” He drawls, eyes set where he thinks Sara’s face is below the coffin lid. “But you come from some very interesting people.”

He starts a slow stride around the coffin, inspecting it, and wondering. He raises one hand as though to rest it on the surface of the box, but he can’t bring himself to. It’s ridiculous, really. She’s in the box, the box isn’t her, it’s a barrier. But… he still can’t help but feel that he doesn’t have a right to be here.

She doesn’t know him. If this does work, and frankly he’s not sure he’s entirely convinced that it will despite everything else he’s seen in the past year, what will she think of him? She’ll ask about the random guy standing in the corner and what? Is he supposed to just tell her he’s her soulmate?

“I don’t know how you feel about all this soulmate stuff, I’m not even sure how I feel about it, it was never really something I wanted.”

He eyes the box and sighs; he knows he has no real reason to care about any of these people. At minimum he should maybe give a damn or two about Sara, but she’s dead. Laurel and Thea? They shouldn’t mean jack to him, and they don’t, but with his eyes still looking at the rough wood with dirt still seeped into its cracks he knows they mean something to her.

And, as the constant ache in his chest is so fond of reminding him, whether he likes it or not, she means something to him.

“Look, if you come out of that pit and you want nothing to do with me, that’s fine. I’m not expecting anything from you on my end. But I think your sister is one bad outcome away from losing her mind. So for her sake, when they dunk you in that pool, you need to come back.”

It’s no sooner that have the words left his lips that he hears the dull pounding of angry footsteps approaching the room, and only a second after he looks up the door bursts open and Laurel storms in.

He doesn’t ask, he doesn’t need to, it’s written all over her face.

They aren’t going to help.

“Thea’s talking to Merlyn.” She says, approaching the coffin slowly, a stark contrast to her pace of only a minute ago.

“And what are the chances of that going well?” He asks, and she does allow herself to reverently skim the surface of the coffin with the palm of her hand.

“About fifty-fifty.” She answers, not looking up at him at first, and when she does, the clear determination is still in her eyes. “I’m not giving up.”

He nods, and opens his mouth to tell her that he knows she isn’t, it’s probably the only thing he knows right now, but the words that come next don’t come from him.

“Because you’re only thinking of yourself.”

He turns, there’s a new woman standing in the doorway, with long dark hair and dressed from head to toe in black leather.

She looks at him briefly, but quickly sets her sights past him and back on Laurel, and he may not have the slightest clue who she is aside from being a League member, but he’s getting the feeling just from her lack of concern with him at she cares about Sara, enough to overlook a stranger in her home at least.

“I expected your support.” Laurel says to the woman, also talking past him. “I was counting on it.”

“Then you never really knew me at all.”

With that she finally looks back at him, and then back to Laurel.

“Who is this?”

He looks to Laurel for that answer, his eyebrow raised, and despite all of the crazy things she’s done today she somehow looks more uncomfortable now than he’s previously seen her. He wonders what that’s about, but for now he’ll concede that she’s dealing with enough, so he turns to the new woman and offers his hand.

“Leonard Snart.” He introduces, “As for why I’m here, I’m not too clear on that myself.”

He notes Laurel rolling her eyes, and the woman, accepting his offered hand, looking at him with even more confusion before she turns that look onto Laurel.

Laurel, who slides her hands uncomfortably into her back pockets and sighs a long, dreading, sigh.

“His mark matches Sara’s arrow wounds.” She explains, and the eyes of the other woman widen.

“You’re Sara’s marked?” She asks, and he nods, trying to gauge how she feels about it.

“She never-”

“I never knew her.” He assures her, being quick to do so because there’s a hint of betrayal on her face as well as in her voice. She must have been close with Sara. “I was in Star City, the night that it happened. She crashed through my windshield.”

The woman looks mildly horrified upon hearing that, but there’s something else in her expression, too. Something… not happy, but… accepting.

“A true sign from the universe.” She says and he scoffs, but she doesn’t seem to notice and in a mirror of his earlier action she holds out her hand.

“I’m Nyssa. Sara and I, well, we were close to say the least.” She chuckles with that, and it takes a minute for the pieces to fully click together in his mind, he’s still a little unsure about her meaning even as he accepts the handshake.

But it would explain Laurel’s sudden awkwardness when Nyssa had come in, as well as her statement of expecting Nyssa’s support. It makes the most sense, really, and if the situation here weren’t so serious he might laugh at the fear Laurel must be feeling right now; bringing her sister’s soulmate along to ask for help from her ex and all.

“Even if you didn’t know her,” Nyssa continues, her face serious once again. “I trust you want what’s best for Sara?”

He nods without really thinking about it. He may have never gotten to know Sara to care about her, but in that same sense, he never got the chance to not care about her.

“The Lazarus Pit is a dark entity Leonard, it twists its victims into monsters, and only in legend has it been said to revive a body as dead as Sara’s.”

“Nyssa.” Laurel cuts in, but the assassin pays her no mind.

“Even if it works, the creature that will rise out of that pit will not be Sara.”

“Nyssa.” Laurel is louder this time, firmer, yet when Nyssa looks over at her she is almost trembling.

“Sara’s spirit is strong, you know that as well as I do. She will come back.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

There’s a new fire in Nyssa’s eyes, an angry fire, and she marches forward until she is only a mere few inches away from Laurel.

“What will you do if it’s a monster that comes out of that pit? A demon? What will you do when-”

“Okay.” Len cuts in, placing one hand on Nyssa’s shoulder and inserting himself between the two of them, before one of them can say or do anything they might regret.

“That’s enough of this for now. Why don’t we all just take a breather, in separate rooms, and wait and see what Thea has to say when she gets back, hm?”

Neither Nyssa or Laurel looks particularly thrilled with his intervention, both of them glaring at each other with expressions that look like they belong on the faces of thirteen-year-olds fighting over a dress rather than something serious as another woman’s life, or death, in this case.

“Very well.” Nyssa finally agrees, “Malcolm won’t cave.”

“Because he’s the one who killed Sara in the first place.” Laurel seethes and Leonard files that little piece of information away for later, while also putting an arm in front of Nyssa when she takes another step towards Laurel.

“Alright.” He says evenly, “Enough, let’s just separate.”

The two women continue to glare at each other, but Nyssa does take a step back followed by another, and then she turns on her heel and leaves the room, closing the doors behind her.

Leonard turns his eyes onto Laurel as soon as she’s gone, but Laurel is of course still burning holes into the wooden door with her eyes.

“Laurel.” He says, getting her attention.

“This will work.” She promises immediately, and he nods, slow and careful, trying to select his next words delicately.

Unfortunately, he can’t come up with anything.


	3. An Impossible Choice

It isn’t Thea who comes in for them, but rather the two guards from before. Leonard thinks they’re the same two guards at least, even with his nearly impeccable skills of perception it’s a little hard to tell. Everything aside from their eyes is covered in black, not quite ninja but something close, garb. One of them motions for him and Laurel to follow and he looks to Laurel, and she steps forward and does as she’s instructed.

Well, when in Rome.

Sara’s coffin is left in the room, and Leonard can’t resist taking a look back as they’re led away. Briefly he wonders if they’re being thrown out, and maybe Thea is waiting back on the jet.

That doesn’t turn out to be the case.

They’re brought up to yet another room, this one containing a bed as well as a few cushions set up in the corner much like the last one. There’s a chair as well, a closed suitcase on its seat with a similar one standing next to it.

Right, Thea and Laurel had time to pack for this insanity.

The two guards leave without a word, the heavy doors closing behind them and sealing Leonard and Laurel into the room.

“They’re not very big on talking here, are they?” He drawls, strolling his way around the dimly lit room and inspecting it.

“They tend to let their swords do the majority of that.” Laurel replies, but it’s obvious her thoughts are far from his question.

She has the elbow of one arm balanced on the wrist of the other, her fingers of that hand picking thoughtfully at her lips.

He lets her think, and paces the room lost in his own world of thought. He has to wonder where Thea is, when she’ll come back, and with what news. He’s also thinking about Nyssa and her warning.

She, its obvious, loved Sara as much as Laurel does, and she knows more about the pit. He should listen to her. She’s probably seen what this pit can do on living bodies, and if she is this against using it to revive Sara than he should back her up. Laurel isn’t thinking clearly, having your sister’s life hanging in the balance will do that to you, so somebody else here needs to.

“We should get some rest while we can.” Laurel says, unzipping the suitcase on the chair and digging through it until she pulls out a pair of sweatpants and a loose shirt.

He glances at the door, mentally debating the pros and cons of leaving his designated space in a city made up of assassins.

Well, he never has had much respect for rules.

He’s a little surprised when the door opens, even though he hadn’t heard a lock he had still been half expecting to pull on the handle and be met by a door that wouldn’t budge. But it does, and he steps out into the hall to allow Laurel to change. And to stretch his legs

These long hallways that all look the same, he isn’t going to lie, are starting to get to him. He doesn’t like not being able to tell at first glance where he’s already been and where he hasn’t, nor is he thrilled with the idea of wandering around and possibly getting lost.

Leonard Snart does not handle getting lost very well.

So he stays relatively close to the door until Laurel pokes her head out and lets him back in, looking more than a little nervous.

“What?” He asks as he follows her back into the room, because what could’ve possibly happened in the thirty seconds she was changing?  
He has to follow her eyes for an answer, and they land squarely on the bed. The only bed in the room.

Laurel opens her mouth to say something, but he cuts her off before she can get so much as a sound out.

“You take it.” He says, already moving for the little pile of cushions in the corner. “I’ll hang out over here.”

She still looks a little guilt ridden over it, but soon enough she climbs on the bed and lays down with her back to him.

He sinks down into the pile of cushions, which are about as comfortable as they look, but he doesn’t really plan on sleeping anyway. He is tired, not exhausted but tired, and so he spends the next few minutes occupying his thoughts with trying to determine how long it’s been since he last slept.

Probably long ago enough that he should follow Laurel’s example and get some sleep.

“Am I making a mistake?”

Or, maybe that isn’t exactly what she’s doing.

Her voice is soft, quiet, but definite and loud enough that he can hear her. Even so she rolls onto her other side, apparently needing to see with her own eyes that he’s heard her.

He considers the question a moment. He takes into account what Nyssa said earlier as well as any other little pieces of information he’s picked up regarding all this, which isn’t much.

“I don’t know.” He finally says, and while he is far from being an honest man it is his honest stance on the matter. Truth be told, they can argue about this until the cows come home, but at the end of the day not even the head of the League has ever seen it attempted before. They just don’t know.

“It’s risky.” He says when she continues to look at him. “So I guess the real question is, is it worth it?”

She thinks a moment, which given her actions today is a little surprising. But it isn’t long before she nods against her pillow, and then she opens her mouth to say something-

But the opening door robs her of the chance.

Its Thea who comes trudging in, her breath heavy and her face tinted red, though that might be only a trick of the low light of the room. Might. Her father is behind her and she makes a b-line for the suitcase Laurel had opened, stuffing inside anything Laurel had taken out and saying that it’s time for them to go.

“What?” Laurel asks, but Leonard keeps his eyes focused on the younger woman’s father standing in the doorway.

“Thea,” the man in question says, voice pleading, and in the blink of an eye the younger woman’s face morphs into a feral scowl.

“Stay the hell away from me.” She growls, and Leonard is on his feet before she finishes, his fingers brushing the hilt of his cold gun still secured it’s holster.

“Thea, what’s wrong?” Laurel asks, just barely off the bed.

“He’s not gonna help Sara, and he’s NOT gonna help me.” There are tears evident in her voice, and his grip on the gun gets just a little tighter.

“Thea-”

That’s it.

Merlyn takes half a step forward, and Leonard has his gun drawn and charged before the head assassin can so much as blink, but thankfully he has the good sense to stop.

“You heard her.” He sneers, “Stay the hell away from her.”

The room is deadly silent after that, the others obviously unsure of how to respond to this.

“Thea.” Merlyn eventually says in an even tone. “Call off your friend.”

Leonard glances out of the corner of his eye at Thea, who still looks a bit shell-shocked by his actions, but nods to him and after another few seconds of hesitance he follows the command. Icing Merlyn, even if he killed Sara, isn’t his decision to make; though he will gladly do it if Thea decides that’s what she wants.

“Thea I know I have hurt you-”

“Hurt me?” She snarls, a fire in her eyes that is too familiar to Leonard. “That’s a little bit of an understatement, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps.” Merlyn answers in an even tone, the even tone of someone who will say anything they need to in order to make it to their end goal. “So let me at least try to make some of it right.”

“How?” Thea scoffs, her arms folding across her chest.

Merlyn hesitates a second, visibly going through some sort of list in his mind before he finally accepts that whatever he is about to say is his only option.

“By bringing Sara back.”

Leonard feels his own eyes flicker wide; see’s the same reaction on Laurel, but Thea… Thea fixes her father with a hard and deadly glare.

“Do you really think that knowing what that pit has done to me, that I would let that happen to Sara?” She sneers, and ok, that peeks his interest because Thea, up until saying that, has seemed just fine to Leonard.

“I think if you were truly sincere in fighting your bloodlust, that you would offer the same to Sara.”

“What are you saying?” Laurel steps in before this argument can go any further, and before Leonard can gauge any more information from it.

“That I am willing to heal my daughter’s conscience by restoring your sister’s life.” Merlyn spells out with an even, and dare Leonard think it, threatening gaze locked onto Thea, and then moving it to Laurel. “That we should prepared Sara’s body for the ceremony.”

He leaves them with that, and Laurel pulls Thea into a hug while Leonard, Leonard is starting to think more than ever that they should heed Nyssa’s warning.

 

* * *

 

They shouldn’t be doing this. They shouldn’t be doing this. They shouldn’t be doing this.

The thought is on repeat in Thea’s head, a torturous mantra, one that she feels she should have the power to stop but when she thinks about it…

When she thinks about it, all she can picture is Laurel’s heartbroken face.

A shudder runs through her body just at the thought, and she leans herself up against the nearest wall to keep from being sick. Laurel is off with Leonard, Malcolm, and a few other assassins, preparing Sara’s body for the ceremony. She couldn’t bear to help, but she couldn’t beg Laurel not to do it, either. She wants Sara back, but if it means she would have to live with this bloodlust…

She takes another shaky inhale of breath, she doesn’t know what decision is the right one.

“You sure you don’t want me to kill him?”

She jumps at the new voice. Leonard has just turned the corner, his expression one of sympathy that she thinks looks out of place on him, but that might only be because she doesn’t know him.

She’d had no idea what to think when Laurel had said they needed to make a pit stop in Central City and then came back with him, and claiming him to be Sara’s soulmate no less. Unconsciously her hand goes to her own soul mark, on her other wrist, a grey colored band that matches perfectly to the impression the handcuffs left on Roy the night he was kidnapped and held in the subway car. Marks aren’t always the counterparts of permanent scars, or even scars at all. Some people believe they’re the reflections of something that happens in a turning point, something that starts one soulmate down the path to the other.

She can only hope that’s the case for Sara and Leonard.

“I’m sure,” she answers in a voice that is weak with tears. “Thank you though.”

He nods, stepping a little closer and eventually leaning himself against the wall right next to her.

“Well, if you change your mind, just let me know. Wouldn’t be the first bastard father I’ve killed in the last two days.”

She’s not sure if he’s expecting her to just roll with that, but they are standing in the headquarters of The League of Assassins, which her bastard father runs, so she ends up having an easier time with it than she probably should.

“So…” He drawls in a new tone, a curious one. “Care to share about this bloodlust and why you don’t want Sara going in the pit?”

She almost laughs, almost asks if he’s only offered to kill Malcolm because he wants information out of her, but then she sees his expression. He’s worried.

Up until now she had been getting the impression that he only came along because Laurel dragged him on the plane without giving him any details, and maybe that is a part of it, but another part is Sara. He’s the outsider here, but he’s also her soulmate, and in the midst of everyone yelling at each other he’s just trying to figure out which side to take.

“The pit… it asks for a price.” She tells him, her eyes falling to her shoes scuffing against the dirt of the floor. “A life for a life, or… lives. The people who go in it, they come out with this need to take.”

Suddenly she can’t avoid his eyes anymore, and when she looks back he’s watching her with a calculative look, something she greatly prefers over fear or pity.

The moment doesn’t last, however. It’s interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming at the far end of the hall and in turning her head Thea sees Laurel standing there.

She doesn’t need to say anything.

 

* * *

 

Leonard has seen dead bodies before, plenty, most by his hand, but never again will he allow himself to forget the difference between a recently killed body and a full on corpse.

He’d thought they were one in the same, but looking at Sara lain out on the wooden platform suspended over a pool of hot, bubbling, possible monster creating water, he knows the difference now.

She is literally skin and bones, nothing more, except maybe a few rotted organs. Her blonde hair looks starkly out of place as it dangles from her head; even more similar to dead straw than it had been when he first noticed it in his mouth on the night she died.

He had left the ceremony preparations before they had taken her body out, he needed to think, to find Thea and ask her for her point of view. Frankly, he still doesn’t know what he thinks, other than Malcolm Merlyn is a jackass who is absolutely only doing this because he thinks it can buy love in his daughter’s eyes.

Idiot.

He supposes that’s only proof that they shouldn’t be doing this.

Thea knows it, Nyssa knows it, and deep down he knows it too. Playing God isn’t something that ever seems to work out for anyone is the movies, and reality is far from being as merciful as a movie.

Unfortunately, Laurel and Merlyn are too consumed with their own naiveties to see this, and they’re the ones in charge.

He should stop them.

He should cause a scene, tell Laurel she’s about to cross a line. He should tell her that Sara is dead and there is no bringing her back. Thea should say something, anything.

But neither of them does.

Some of the assassins present are chanting, he doesn’t know what they’re saying nor what language they’re speaking. The wooden platform is supported by four ropes, each of which needs to be lowered. He’s manning one, next to a nameless assassin, and on the opposite side of the pool are Laurel and Thea.

Neither of them, not even Laurel, looks completely confident in doing this, but he can’t imagine that he does either.

On the assassin’s cue they start the process of lowering Sara into the pool, the wood of the platform creaking as it’s moved.

“I will see you all dead before I let you do this!”

Nyssa’s furious voice suddenly fills the room, accompanied by the sound of the door slamming open and hitting the wall on its way.

The other assassins in the room are quick to draw their swords on her, circling her so there is no move she can make without getting a blade embedded in her throat.

“Laurel please.” She begs, there is no other word for it, and Leonard may not have known these people for very long but he’s pretty sure that when the assassin starts begging that’s how you know you’ve gone too far.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Thea asks, clearly seeing the same problem, and Laurel actually looks hesitant for all of a fraction of a second before she tells Thea to keep going.

“Laurel.” Leonard drawls from his own position, not moving his rope. She locks eyes with him, a fiery determination raging her green orbs.

When he still doesn’t move to continue she gives her rope a swift tug, and if she’s going to put Sara in this pit even if it means letting her fall in, he might as well make sure it doesn’t come to that.

It only takes two more tugs on their respective ropes for Sara to be submersed in the bubbling water.

They let go of their ropes one by one, the tension in the room high as they all wait for something, anything, to either happen or not happen. It doesn’t take long, really, but it feels long. It feels like it takes an eternity, so much so that Nyssa exhales in relief and Merlyn starts telling Thea that it isn’t working.

He doesn’t get very far with that, however, because the surface of the water starts to break with a very living Sara rising out of it.

Her eyes are wide, as are those of everyone else in the room, himself included. On some level he is aware that he is holding his breath, they all are, and like the others he can’t bring himself to exhale.

Not until Sara gives some kind of sign as to her mental state.

“Sara?” Laurel asks, but her sister doesn’t appear to have heard her. She stays where she is, half immersed in the pit, breathing in and out like it’s all she knows how to do.

Maybe it is.

Or, maybe it’s not. She finally moves; launching herself out of the pit at a speed and height you wouldn’t expect a person to be able to reach, never mind a previously dead person. She lands in a crouch right in front of Nyssa, her breathing now heavy and raged like she’s just fought a hard battle.

 And then she turns.

Spins would actually be more like it, on her heels and knuckles like a gorilla, with the look of animalistic hellfire in her eyes to match. She launches herself at Laurel and Thea but doesn’t get within a foot of them before two assassins plus Merlyn start restraining her.

“Sara! Sara it’s ok.” Laurel insists, stepping forward and gripping onto her sister’s shoulders before changing her tactic to cradling her jaw instead.

To her credit Sara does begin calming down, though that might be more thanks to the nerve Merlyn is pinching at the crook of her neck.

“It’s ok.” She continues to whisper as Sara goes lax in the arms of the assassins, her eyes fluttering closed when she finally succumbs to Merlyn’s grip on her pressure point. “It’ll be ok.”

She keeps saying it, but as he exchanges glances with both Nyssa and Thea, Leonard knows that they’re all avoiding asking the same question.

Will it?


	4. Beauty or the Beast?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter is a little shorter than the others have been. I just got to the end quicker than I was expecting and didn't want to add anything unnecessary before, believe me I looked for things to add but nothing worked. The rest of the chapters will be longer!

The assassins drag Sara away once she’s out, leaving the rest of them standing there to watch and try and process what just happened.

It really should take longer than just a few seconds.

“She’ll wake soon.” Merlyn assures them, though he still looks fifty different types of stunned and nervous. “And hopefully, though I can’t guarantee it, she will be the Sara that we lost.”

Leonard notices the scowl on Thea’s face, the unspoken remark that _he_ was the one who killed Sara to begin with. _He_ didn’t lose her. He took her.

Nyssa looks like she is only moments away from crying, but when Merlyn takes his leave she follows him dutifully, with nothing more than an angry glare in Laurel’s direction.

He can see what it is that Sara saw in her.

When the doors close and it’s just the three of them left in the chamber they all sigh heavily, Laurel most of all. In fact she practically collapses into Thea’s arms, holding tight to the younger woman who sways back and forth on her feet.

She sends him a look over Laurel’s shoulder, a question. She has no idea what to do, what to say, and neither does he. He wants to tell her it’ll all be fine, they did just see Sara leap out of the pit, and she looked far from dead. But that ache he’s come to live with in his chest is still there, empty as ever, and maybe it’ll just take time to wear off or something but until it does he isn’t sure he can bring himself to tell her already fragile sister that everything is fine.

So he does what he feels to be the next best thing; he gives them some alone time.

He exits the room without a word, or any real idea as to where he’s going, but he doesn’t get too far.

He only goes as far as down the hall and then turns the corner to see Nyssa standing in the corridor, her forehead pressed against the wall and her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs.

At first he stands frozen, not sure if he should proceed or turn around and go the other way. She has to have noticed him; she is an assassin after all. But she gives no indication of it. Maybe she’s waiting for him to decide how he’s going to play this, if he’s going to play it all. Finally, he takes a step forward, followed by another, and then another-

And then her red face snaps up.

Her brown eyes are bloodshot and wide, her tears shining in the low light of the torches.

“What have we done?” Her voice is nothing more than a gasp, followed by a low-pitched shudder before she buckles down on herself, bending over with a sob as if speaking were the final straw of her resolve.

He isn’t good with tears. Whenever Lisa would cry when they were younger, he’s ashamed to admit it but for most of that time he was still taking Lewis’s lessons to heart, including the ones about not crying. By the time he realized crying had been a perfectly rational response in those situations Lisa had stopped, or at the very least he never heard her. The point is he hasn’t really dealt with tears in a long time. Sure, Thea and Laurel have both let a few tears slip since this whole mess began, hell Laurel is probably crying right now, but they have each other. Poor Nyssa, on the other hand, is stuck with him, and she’d probably be better off if he just turned around like he never saw anything and let her be.

“I don’t know.” He says by way of answering her question.

She glances at him out of the corner of her eye, sniffling, and so he takes another step forward.

He finds that he doesn’t know what else he could say. There’s no way he can reassure her, not without lying to her anyway, and he won’t do that. She would see right through it anyway, and even if she wouldn’t she has been through so much here, she doesn’t deserve to be lied to about it.

So he leans his back against the wall and crosses his arms, trying to process for himself everything that has just happened. She remains quiet while he does so, hiccupping out the last of her tears and wiping at her eyes.

They don’t talk for a good long while. The silence is comfortable and very much needed. He is always on alert for a newcomer approaching, even in the most comfortable of situations, but all the other assassins in this place seem to be avoiding this corridor like it’s a plague.

“How…” Nyssa finally breaks the silence, though her voice is still thick and raspy with tears and she needs to pause to get some of that under control. “How did Laurel find you?”

He debates, for a moment, about telling her. He isn’t overly concerned with how she’ll feel in regards to the whole “convicted felon” thing, he gets the feeling that she’s seen enough to know the world isn’t black and white. But he also knows that she isn’t asking about yesterday.

“Laurel was there too.” He says, “I’m not sure for how long. After Sara crashed through my windshield I got out of the car and she was standing at the other end of the street.”

Even in the low light he can see Nyssa turn the slightest shade of green, the look of horror from earlier when he’d told her about Sara’s death back in its place.

“I think that’s why she’s so desperate.” He says, trying to move through the topic quickly. “Seeing something like that happen to your sister, it messes you up.”

He doesn’t want to think about those words. Working with Lewis, and not to mention simply living with him during his childhood, he’s done some questionable things to keep Lisa safe. He has no interest in knowing what he would have done if he ever lost even one of those fights.

Nyssa nods, an understanding on her face accompanied by something else, a conflict, probably her feelings in regards to all of this.

“My father was the head of The League, before Malcolm. For over a century.” She pauses to let him digests that, as well as understand what exactly that means. “He used the pit to prolong his life, and it twisted his mind, but… Even so, his humanity was always there, even if it wasn’t always at the forefront.”

He nods to that, marking it as yet another thing to come back to later and reexamine.

“Let’s hope that can be the case for Sara.”

Nyssa doesn’t look entirely reassured by that, or even marginally reassured, but it’s all he’s got.

 

* * *

 

Unfortunately, he’s starting to think maybe they aren’t going to be so lucky.

Sara’s awake now, with long chains and thick shackles wrapped securely around her waist, ankles, and wrists, holding her to four steel beams. The beams are the only structure in the chamber they’ve put her in, and it makes Leonard wonder what in hell thisroom is used for on a regular basis, since feral zombies doesn’t sound to be a regular occurrence.

Oh well, he has bigger things to worry about.

Laurel is standing in front of Sara, still insisting that everything is going to be fine; and he’s camped out in the doorway watching as Sara lurches for her sister with a menacing growl.

He inclines his head in a mix of interest and alarm with that, Laurel having just finished detailing how happy they’re father is going to be when he sees her.

Call him crazy, and granted he doesn’t know their father, but Leonard isn’t sure her expectations are very realistic.

Sara still looks more animal than human, and that pesky ache is still resonating in his chest.

He should probably tell Laurel about that, because it is a clear sign that this hasn’t worked as well as they were hoping. But at this points he kind of doubts she would listen, and if he’s being honest with himself there is still a part of him that’s holding onto hope that it’ll go away.

“Laurel?” Thea calls, entering the room with her father in tow.

Leonard spares a disapproving, and also very warning, glare onto Merlyn has the other man passes him, not looking very amused by the silent threat and obvious disapproval.

Laurel, maybe with her last shred of sanity, at least looks rattled by the way Sara has just lunged for her.

“It’s fine.” She says firmly, defensively. “The same thing happened to you when you first came out of the pit.”

He doesn’t really pay attention to those words, or the ones that follow. Instead his focus is on Sara.

For as animalistic as she is right now, she has so far been relatively calm. Her body has been tense, her eyes were glaring daggers into Laurel, but it wasn’t until Laurel stepped to close that she tried to attack.

A frightened animal.

Leonard has been in enough prisons to know the difference between a frightened animal and a provoked one.

She starts struggling against her restraints from the moment Thea and Merlyn enter, with a hateful look in her eyes. Oddly enough, that ignites a flicker of hope for Leonard. If she knows Merlyn killed her, then maybe she is somewhere in there after all.

“Laurel,” Merlyn’s voice cuts through Leonard’s haze of thought. “We are in uncharted waters here. I suggest you prepare yourself for the worst.”

Looking at where they are right now, Leonard has to wonder what “the worst” would be.

“My liege,” A new assassin says, passing him by in the doorway and hurrying into the room. “Something has happened.”

Well this can’t be good.

Merlyn hurries out of the chamber; followed by Thea, and after casting one more glance back at Sara, Laurel goes too. He’s intending to follow her, but she stops in the doorway.

“Stay with her?” She asks, and while he’s not proud his first instinct is to say no. Call him crazy, but soulmate or not he isn’t exactly eager to babysit a possibly feral and very undead assassin. But Laurel’s look is pleading, and damn he always has been a sucker for big eyes and a pouting lip.

He nods to her, and she hurries off to go help with whatever crisis has just arisen; hopefully it isn’t hell raining down on them for breaking the laws of nature.

At this point, he wouldn’t rule it out.

So now he’s alone with his soulmate, who is looking at him in the same way he would imagine a predatory animal looks at a slightly larger predator. Fearful, but also seizing up if she can take him.

He gets the feeling that even in her right mind she definitely could.

He approaches her and she jerks forward with a grunt, warning him not to come any closer, and he obeys.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” He says; his voice practically a whisper, his hands raised in surrender, and his eyes firmly locked onto hers.

He holds that position of a few minutes, unmoving, whereas she can’t seem to stop fidgeting. He stares her down until she’s finally still, or as still as she’s going to get anyway. When he finally dares to take another step towards her she gives her chains a tug and grunts, but steps back when he stops.

“I don’t know if you can hear me.” He says,  “But I get the feeling that this snarling animal I’m looking at isn’t you.”

She doesn’t really react to him, not beyond bouncing her weight from one foot to the other and giving her shackles another good shake. He doesn’t move any closer. Instead he waits for her to calm down, and with a final flare of her nostrils she eventually does, but he still doesn’t dare move.

“My name is Leonard, we’ve never met before, I don’t expect you to trust me.” He isn’t even sure she can understand him, let alone find it in her to trust him. “I’m a friend of your sister’s, Laurel’s, I’m only here because she asked me to be.”

He can’t tell where it is in that sentence in which the truth ends and the lie begins, or if both are even present. But the important thing is that Sara, even if she has no idea what he’s said, doesn’t seem offended by it. She’s more still now, barely fidgeting, and he isn’t going to take that for granted.

He sits down where he is, lowering himself to the floor slowly, and while Sara does lurch forward there doesn’t appear to be any threat in her movement this time. The grunt that accompanies her movement isn’t threatening either, a first, but is instead a sound more of curiosity.

“I promised Laurel I would keep an eye on you.” He explains himself, and he doesn’t think she really gets it, but she takes a step back and after that she hardly acknowledges that he’s even there.


	5. No Hope Left

The thing that happened, turns out, is Nyssa destroyed the Lazarus Pit. Merlyn’s locked her up for it, calling her a traitor, even though he had originally been against bringing Sara back and only did so in a vain attempt to get back on his daughter’s good side. In Leonard’s opinion Nyssa destroying the pit was a perfectly valid response to Merlyn turning her ex into a snarling animal. A bit dramatic perhaps, but he can appreciate that.

Right now, however, he doesn’t have time to venture down into the dungeon and shit-talk Merlyn with Nyssa, though that does sound fun. No, right now he needs to focus on Laurel, and how in the name of hell she expects to get Sara back to Star City in this state.

“The familiar places will be good for her.” She insists, zipping up her suitcase with a finality that lets him know he doesn’t stand a chance at convincing her to stay here until Sara comes back to herself.

If she comes back to herself.

He doesn’t want to think about that.

“You said yourself she was one of these people.” He reminds her from where he’s leaned himself in the doorway. “If this place isn’t familiar-”

“Star City is her home.” Laurel tells him firmly, rounding on him with her chin up, as though she’s daring him to argue. “It’ll come back to her.”

He doesn’t argue, not that he agrees but he isn’t about to waste his breath.

Merlyn knocks Sara out again ahead of them leaving, whether he uses her pressure point again or some kind of drug Leonard isn’t sure, but the other man seems confident that Sara won’t be waking until long after they land so he’s leaning more toward drugs.

Even with her asleep, Merlyn still tries convincing Laurel to chain her to a seat, or transport her in a cage, before they finally compromise between imprisonment and free reign by buckling Sara’s seatbelt and handcuffing both her wrists to the armrests.

“So, can I assume you want to be dropped back in Central City?” Laurel asks him after they’ve taken off, dragging him from his thoughts.

He pretends to consider it for a moment, trying to think of the best way to answer without making it sound like he doesn’t trust her.

Which, for the record, he isn’t sure he does; not right now anyway.

“I should probably stay out of there for awhile.” He finally says, “And you might still need my help with this, so I’ll hang around Star City.”

Laurel nods, and Thea almost looks grateful, a stark contrast to the way she had looked at him only two days ago.

The moment passes quick enough, and with the matter of where he’s going settled the two women go back to talking about their friends and their cover story of a “spa weekend”, and he goes back to thinking.

Which, inevitably, turns to studying Sara.

He’s seated next to her, and with her asleep he’s able to get his first real look at her. She’s pale, but nowhere near as pale as she was the last time he got this kind of a look at her; dead and lying on three bar tables. Her face is decorated with a smattering of freckles and her blonde hair is still a frizzy and gnarled mess, but it still looks immeasurably better than it did when so much of her blood had stained it. Her jacket and gloves had been removed from her corpse at some point, and this exposed parts of her he hadn’t been able to see when she crashed through his windshield.

Including her soul mark.

He had seen it since the ceremony, though he hadn’t been able to get close enough to her to look at it.

It’s on her wrist, encircling it in a jagged ring with some lines that run a little higher up than others. He doesn’t recognize it to mean anything to him, but then again, before her death she would’ve said the same thing about his. Another thing he notices is her mark is a much lighter tone of grey than his, so much so that it’s almost invisible. He had never heard about marks varying in shades, it’s supposedly the only constant among the damn things. He remembers vaguely reading his anatomy textbook back in high school, or skimming through it, and reading something about soul marks sometimes getting lighter on the bodies of the deceased, but it was thought to be due to loss of blood flow like the rest of the skin.

Yet, Sara’s blood is flowing again.

Maybe it will just take time, like the ache still in his chest.

 

* * *

 

Whatever Merlyn did to Sara does as he said it would, she’s still out like a light when they land.

Leonard gets her out of the handcuffs, without the aid of the keys, and then picks her up and follows Laurel and Thea off the plane, which thankfully is a private one because otherwise this would have never worked, and to Laurel’s car. He ignores the smug grins they’re both giving him over the course of the walk; it isn’t like they have a lot of options for transporting Sara.

When they finally get to the car he gets her buckled into the back and, when Thea slides into the passenger seat while he’s busy, he rolls his eyes and get in the back on the other side.

“Alright, so what’s the plan now?” He asks, situating himself and eyeing Sara one more time to confirm she hasn’t woken.

“Now we go home.” Laurel says, starting up the car, and thank God Thea looks at her like she’s crazy, because there’s no way she can see his expression.

“What about Sara?” She asks, not that Laurel seems to understand the concern.

“She’s coming with us.” She says it like it should be obvious, and Leonard rolls his eyes.

“Laurel.” He says as evenly as he can, “She’s an undead assassin and not currently in her right mind. You can’t just let her have free reign of your place.”

“Well what do you suggest we do with her then?” She scoffs, though there is a hint of seriousness in the question, which is a good sign. At least some tiny part of her is still thinking logically.

Thea glances back at him nervously, and then leans over the center console to whisper something to Laurel. Leonard doesn’t appreciate being left in the dark, obviously, but whatever Thea has suggested Laurel scrunches her nose and shakes her head at it, so he’ll worry about it later. For now his eyes fix back on Sara, still asleep and unaware of the debate taking place regarding her immediate future.

* * *

 

“I know I said you shouldn’t let her run loose around your apartment,” he comments as he follows Laurel down the stairs to her building’s dark, damp basement, Sara once again in his arms. “But this isn’t exactly the alternative I had in mind.”

“What alternative did you have in mind?”

Well, she’s got him there.

“I don’t like this anymore than you do.” She says, “But it’s just until her mind comes back.”

_“If it ever does.”_ Leonard quashes down that less than optimistic thought, even if he can’t bury it any deeper than he can the burning ache still in his chest. He won’t say those words out loud. Not yet. For whatever reason he is still choosing to ignore that ache and all the pessimistic thoughts that come with it.

He watches as Laurel wraps sturdy chains around a thick pillar of concrete, and only once she’s done he carefully lowers Sara to sit on the cold ground, propped up by the pillar.

They forgo wrapping the chains around her waist and legs, to give her some freedom of movement, but they wrap each of her wrists three times. Even Laurel admitted that they can’t risk her breaking out of here, so maybe she does have a shred of sanity left.

“Ok.” She says once they’re done, stepping back to check over their work. “Thea and I have to go help a friend with something, are you good to stay here until she wakes up?”

It doesn’t totally surprise him that she wants to leave him here, in fact he might even call it responsible, though he is curious as to what exactly her friend needs that is so important she’s willing to temporarily abandon the sister she’s just brought back from the dead.

He shouldn’t say yes, he doesn’t want her thinking she can keep using him as a babysitter, especially not for a deranged assassin. But he doesn’t exactly have anything better to be doing, even if he is sure he could find something.

“Fine,” He agrees, “But don’t think I’m going to keep doing this.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” She promises with a grin, one he doesn’t entirely trust, and then she’s gone and he is once again left with Sara.

* * *

 

It isn’t too much longer before she wakes up, long enough that he’s sat himself on the ground against another concrete pillar and dozed a bit, but not too long.

At first she wakes gradually, grunting with drowsiness and a small part of him dares to wonder if she’s suddenly herself. But then she starts, jolting to her feet and thrashing against her chains.

“Hey, hey.” He calls to her, standing up himself, but she doesn’t appear to hear him so he resigns to letting her wear herself out.

It takes awhile, and he’s really hoping none of the residents in the apartments above hear her, but eventually she’s standing there panting, her chains gone lax.

“Are you done?”

She snaps her head to him, like she hadn’t even noticed him until now, and she yanks on her chains and roars, lunging for him but of course getting nowhere. She then looks back at the chains as if they have personally scorned her, which they may as well have, and suddenly they’re back to her wearing herself out.

When she’s finally done, again, she turns and looks at him curiously, much like she had back in Nanda Parbat when he chose to sit down. He isn’t sure if she remembers that, or anything since she’s come back, but then he remembers the way she reacted to Merlyn and if a part of her remembers stuff from before she died…

He did not sign up for this.

“You finished now?”

She doesn’t answer, which for her would probably be a grunt. Instead she does maybe the most curious thing he’s seen her do yet; she waits.

Her expression isn’t appraising, nor is it by any stretch predatory or even fearful. She isn’t fidgeting as much as she was back in Nanda Parbat, the only clue of any uneasiness being nothing more than the placement of one foot in front of the other and a bit of excess chain gripped in her hands, ready to try and break out again if he does anything unsavory.

He wouldn’t dream of it.

“Ok.” He breathes, daring to take a step closer, stopping to gauge her reaction.

She doesn’t flinch, at all. Her eyes flit to his foot and then back to his face, a strange sort of permission in them when they meet his gaze again. He approaches slowly, stopping when he’s no more than a few inches away from her, and aside from a small gulp she doesn’t show much fear.

“Do you remember anything?” He asks her in a low voice, one as gentle as he can manage and far more desperate sounding than he had been expecting.

She gulps again and looks down at the chains gripped loosely in her hands, fiddling with them.

The next thing he knows they’re around his neck.

He chokes, and she’s roaring in his ear as he bucks around trying to get her and the chains off of him. He’s fought people much bigger, stronger, and crazier than he is, but as her knees dig into his sides and she pulls the chain tighter around his throat he comes to the terrifying realization that this isn’t really person which he’s fighting, but a wild animal.

A wild animal that knows very well how to kill.

He’s clawing at his own neck, trying to get a grip in the chain, when he hears a faint shout that he can’t afford to pay much mind to. But soon there’s something between him and Sara, and then he can breathe again and he’s staggering forward so fast that he almost face plants into the concrete.

After managing to not fall over he’s focused only on breathing. In and out, in and out, in and-

“What did you do?!”

Oh hell.

He drags his head over to see Laurel staring at him expectantly, even if she is a little blurry in his oxygen-deprived vision.

“Wha…” He wheezes, and that isn’t very becoming of him, so he takes a few more breaths before trying again.

“What do you mean what did I do?” He demands, “She attacked me!”

“Yeah, I want to know why!”

“So do I!” He huffs, “But my guess would be it’s because she’s an animal with the instinct to kill.”

“Oh don’t be ridiculous-”

“I’m being ridiculous?!” He cuts her off, shouting much louder than he normally likes to.

“Laurel look at her!” He shouts again, sticking out his arm in exclamation, directing her attention over to where Sara is cowering as far behind her pillar as she could twist her chain to get, just barely peaking out.

Like a dog tied to a post.

“Open your eyes Laurel.” There is still an edge to his voice, but it’s softer, close to pleading. “I may not have known her before, but I know this isn’t her.”

Laurel does as he’s asked, looks at Sara. He does too, drinking in the sight of her crouched, her fists holding her chain close to her chest and her weight bouncing back and forth. There’s fear in her eyes, and the muscles in her arms are tense and ready for another fight. She wants out of here.

Finally, Laurel turns back to him.

“She just needs time.”

He has to fight the urge to sigh, and in the end his shoulders still sink with the disappointment and heartache.

“You keep saying that, but Laurel look. At. Her.” He waits for her to do so, again, and then he doesn’t wait to have her eyes back on him. “Time isn’t going to fix this.”

There’s a pause; a brief few seconds during which he actually believes he is getting through to her, but then she turns around and the defensiveness is still in her eyes and he knows he’s lost.

“No.” She tells him firmly, continuing to preach even when he rolls his eyes. “No, it’s just been a long time for her. She will-”

“Laurel she’s gone!”

Even Sara is silent.

He… he breathes, that’s all he can do. He hadn’t wanted to yell, he hadn’t wanted Laurel to look at him with tears in her eyes, and he certainly never wanted her to shrink back away from him. When he runs a hand over his face in an attempt to compose himself he picks up some moisture from his own eyes, and that’s just great.

“My mark still hurts.”

His voice is weak, and broken. Far more broken than he would ever care to admit, which is insane because it isn’t like he ever actually believed this whole plan was going to work. Even if he had, so what? Did he think Sara would’ve actually wanted to get to know him? In all the chaos of coming back from the dead?

“What?” Laurel blinks, and he sighs.

“That ache that comes when your soulmate dies.” He specifies, somehow managing to bring his voice back to a somewhat less pathetic sounding tone. “Once your soulmate dies, your mark hurts. Forever. Just this dull ache-”

“Yeah I’ve heard the stories.”

“Well mine’s still there.” He repeats, “And I’ve been telling myself it would just take time to go away. She’s here, she’s breathing, but this isn’t Sara.”

Laurel is still quiet, processing. Both their eyes flit to the source of their argument when she crawls out from behind the pillar, her right wrist very visible.

“Look at her mark.” He asks of her sister, just in case there is still any lingering doubt in her mind. “It’s still faded.”

He waits for a response after that, debating if maybe he should say more, but what else is he supposed to say? He already feels sick, crushing Laurel’s and even a bit of his own hope like this.

“Maybe-”

“Laurel.” He cuts her off before she can say a thing, before she can even suggest that this might take even more time.

She looks back at him, and he shakes his head.

“This is a body, with a brain working off primitive instincts. Primitive instincts and whatever bloody thirsty desires were in that pit. This isn’t Sara.”

She holds his gaze for a long moment, and then turns back to Sara. It looks like she is finally considering it, that this isn’t her sister. The idea twists his heart in a way he never knew was possible. After all she’s done it doesn’t matter, and he of all people has to be the one to tell her.

He would not handle this well if it were Lisa, and her soulmate telling him he had failed at saving her.

He supposes Laurel handles it better.

She doesn’t yell. She doesn’t scream, doesn’t pull out a gun and shoot him, and she doesn’t rant herself into an even deeper pit of denial.

She simply walks away.


	6. Hunting

Leonard leaves the basement and finds a bar, what else is he supposed to do? He isn’t in the mood to go looking for a museum or a bank to case, even at a future date. He isn’t in the mood for a fight, although after a few beers in could be persuaded if someone were to touch the wrong nerve. But for now he’s content to drink.

He doesn’t even know why he’s drinking, it isn’t like he actually believed Sara was going to start coming back to herself, much less want something to do with him. He didn’t even care if she wanted something to do with him or not. In fact, he would prefer if she didn’t.

He orders another beer to wash down that load of crap.

He should be looking for Laurel, making sure she hasn’t done anything else rash or questionable. He’s still not sure if she’s accepted that Sara isn’t coming back or if she’s just given up on convincing him, but either way he should be looking for her instead of sitting here and drinking his sorrows away.

Sorrows he has no business having in the first place.

So before he’s too far gone he pays the bartender and makes his way down the maze of Star City streets, back to her apartment. He doesn’t have too much trouble finding his way there, he only takes maybe two wrong turns and realizes them both right away; he hadn’t gone far before he found the bar.

Not the one she first brought him to a year ago; never that one.

Of course, he has no idea which apartment she actually lives in, and while he could look at all the names on the mailboxes (assuming this is the type of building that labels those) he should probably check to make sure she isn’t in the basement first.

He loiters outside the door for a few minutes before a man comes walking out of the building, and he nods his thanks as he slips in the now open door.

Better to wait rather than breaking in, security cameras are a pain.

He does, however, pick the lock to get into the basement; and thank God for that.

Laurel isn’t down there, and while he should find that comforting he is instead overwhelmed by panic, because neither is Sara.

 

* * *

 

Laurel isn’t asleep. She has too much on her mind to sleep.

She lolls her head to the side, her eyes settling on the dark outline of her own soulmate asleep next to her.

Add a guilty conscience to the list of things keeping her awake.

She had almost told him what she was really doing over the weekend; they’ve been trying to stop lying to each other as of late. But he would’ve told her she’s crazy.

Maybe she is.

She wants to believe that Leonard is wrong; Sara will come back. But, at the same time, she is starting to think she might be kidding herself. Yes, Thea came out of the pit every bit as ferociously as Sara did, but she was also back to her normal self within what? Half an hour? It’s been two days. She could keep believing that it’s because she’s been gone for so long, that she needs more time. But even if her mind isn’t back yet her body is, and Leonard’s mark _should_ have stopped aching by now.

Of course, soulmates are far from being an exact science. No one knows for certain what determines the mark, and a soulmate coming back from the dead is definitely uncharted territory.

Her eyes focus on Ollie next to her again; uncharted territory indeed.

There must have been one other instance or two, somewhere in history where a person _actually_ died and then was resurrected; but nothing she could find on the Internet when she looked.

_Bzzz, Bzzz._

She rolls onto her side, whispering a curse as Ollie starts to stir next to her. She props herself up on her elbow and squints her eyes into the glaring light of her phone.

_Leonard._

Shit.

“What’s going on?”

Ollie asks, hardly a hint of drowsiness in his voice. He tries to get a look at her phone over her shoulder but she clutches to her chest on instinct.

“Nothing.” She tells him, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “It’s work, information on a case.”

“It’s two in the morning.”

“Then it must be good.”

After all the lies he’s told her over the years, everything from cheating when they were teenagers to being The Arrow, she knows he can tells she’s lying. But he doesn’t follow her out of the bedroom, and for that she’s grateful.

“Hello?” She answers the phone in a hushed voice, because even though she’s gotten out of the bedroom she wouldn’t put it past Ollie to be listening at the door.

“We’ve got a problem.” Leonard actually sneers on the other end, which on it’s own is enough to give her goose bumps, never mind the words he’s actually said.

“What problem?”

“Sara’s gone.”

She almost drops her phone.

“What… What do you mean?” That sentence could mean one of two things, neither of which would be good, and there is a part of her that can’t decide which would be the worst.

Which really, that’s a thought that should decide the matter all on it’s own.

“I mean she is apparently a lot stronger than we were giving her credit for.” He says, and she exhales in relief, even if this now means everything just became that much more complicated. “I’m staring at a pile of empty chains.

“Ok.” She says, her breathing starting to regulate again. This is still very much a problem, obviously, but at least Sara is still alive. Somewhere.

“Ok, I’m on my way. Do you think she’s still in the basement?”

“If she was still in this basement, you and I would be having a very different conversation right now.” He promises her, an air annoyance in his voice. “That is, if she’d let me live that long.”

She rolls her eyes, glancing back at the door, her mind already trying to figure out what she is going to tell Oliver.

“Alright just stay put, I’ll be right there.”

“Got it.” He hangs up with that and she keeps her eyes fixed on the door.

She should tell him the truth. He’ll be mad, he’ll tell her she never should have used the pit and she definitely should have at least told him. But, once he’s calmed down, he’ll help.

With a deep breath she lets herself back into the room, and of course he’s sitting up in bed with the sheets half pulled off, ready to move if need be.

“I have to go,” she says awkwardly, completely unsurprised when he gets up rather than lying back down. Even so she continues on like this is totally normal, and opens the closet to pull out the first set of clean clothes she can get her hands on.

“You can go back to sleep,” she says, taking a shirt off it’s hanger. “Just a deadline at work tomorrow, cops just found evidence that could turn the whole trial around-”

She turns around, and he’s standing right there, frowning at her with worry in his eyes.

“Laurel,” he says her name in _that_ voice, the patient one of _“Overall I trust you, but I’m not sure about this exact instance.”_ “That was not your office, what’s going on?”

 

* * *

 

One would think that Laurel would get a move on with Sara missing, but it’s almost ten full minutes before Leonard finally hears the door to the basement open with… two, sets of footsteps coming down.

He ducks behind a Sara’s pillar of concrete, just in case, but peeking around the corner he soon sees Laurel is one of the people hurrying down the stairs.

The other is a man.

Oliver Queen; Leonard’s seen him on the news from time to time.

“What’s he doing here?” He asks as he comes out of hiding, and if the situation weren’t so dire he might find some enjoyment in the dramatic roll of Laurel’s eyes.

“I’m sorry, who are you?” Queen demands in return, and now it’s his turn to roll his eyes, and Laurel’s to speak.

“Ok, Oliver Queen, Leonard Snart. Leonard, Oliver.”

“Snart?” Queen asks, taking a step towards him that he supposes is meant to be at least vaguely threatening. “I’ve heard of you, you’re a criminal.”

“Please, like you’re a saint.”

Laurel tosses him an oddly concerned look at that, the kind he is definitely going to file away until he picks up some further information, but for now they have more pressing matters to worry about.

“It’s a long story,” He ends up saying, “Short version, I’m Sara’s soulmate and Laurel dragged me along for this insane plan that I am hoping she has already explained to you.”

Queen looks at him a moment, agape, before he finally licks his lips and manages a few words.

“How do you know you’re Sara’s soulmate?”

“Three aching blobs on my chest right where her arrows hit.”

“Your mark is still hurting?” He asks, and then looks down to Laurel. “I thought you said-”

“I said it’s complicated.” Laurel nearly hisses, “Sara is alive, but she isn’t herself. Something’s wrong with her.”

“I’ll say.” He agrees, and ok, maybe _that_ wasn’t the best thing to say, at least not so bluntly, but he’s committed at this point.

“She attacked me earlier, and I’m guessing that isn’t normally her go-to reaction to new people?”

“You’d be surprised.” Queen shrugs, but he does seem at least mildly alarmed by the confession, so maybe he’s only trying to be sarcastic.

Then again, Sara was a member of the League of Assassins, so maybe he is serious.

Oh well, he can find out that much later if they manage to get her back to normal.

It’s right then that Queen’s phone starts buzzing, and when he looks at it the look of quizzical concern on his face is enough to bring about a pit of unease in Leonard’s stomach.

“Who is it?” He asks, and Queen looks at him wearily, like he isn’t sure if he should say, fair.

But, he does say.

“It’s the hospital.”

Peachy.

 

* * *

 

They move quick after Queen hangs up the phone, apparently Thea’s lain up and inches away from death after an attack by a “feral blonde woman”, and Leonard is going to blame what is possibly his worst decision as of late on that quick moving.

Now, keep in mind, he has made many poor decisions throughout his life, with the entirety of this past week being highly questionable, but getting into the backseat of Oliver Queen’s car is looking to be a contender for the top.

It has been a long time since he last felt like a child, and his parents’ relationship was a far cry from “traditional” or “healthy”, but sitting in the dead silence of this car and watching every yellow light turn to red before they can drive through it makes him tense like a little boy who knows mom and dad are just waiting to go at it once he’s out of earshot.

Out of habit and history, he might be worried for Laurel if she hadn’t dragged him halfway around the world to bring an assassin back from the dead.

Frankly, he’s a little worried for Queen.

“So.” Queen starts while they’re sitting at this eternal red light. “We decide we ‘re going to make an effort to be more open with each other, and therefor you run off to Nanda Parbat, with my sister, in order to use the Lazarus Pit on Sara?”

“This judgment is the exact reason I didn’t tell you.” Laurel huffs just when the light finally turns green again.

“I am not-” Queen cuts himself off; catching the very judging tone in his voice he was about to deny having. “I am not judging.”

“Sounds like you are.” Len throws in, because why the hell not?

Queen throws a glare over his shoulder at him, and then he eyes are back on the road.

“I’m trying not to judge.” He amends, “But the Lazarus Pit is dangerous, not even the League fully understands it, and honestly I’m a little hurt that you lied to me about where you were.”

“Oh like you haven’t done that before.” Laurel grumbles, and Leonard actually widens his eyes and sinks back a little in his seat.

“Are you serious right now?” Queen demands, his voice a mix of scandalized and betrayed.

“A little bit, yeah.” Laurel defends with a fire in her voice.

“Laurel, we were kids-”

“I am not talking about that!” Now she sounds offended, and Len is torn between wishing he could disappear and wishing he had popcorn.

“I am talking about one major thing you didn’t tell me, which I am not going to specify with Leonard in the back seat, even though it could’ve gotten you killed multiple times! I am talking about how you didn’t tell me you were putting Thea in the pit-”

“Thea was still alive!”

“I don’t care!” They’re here, Queen’s just pulled into a parking spot, but neither of them is moving to go anywhere and he certainly isn’t going to be the first. “Yes, Thea was alive, barely. You did what you had to do to save her, so I don’t see why you of all people can’t understand my actions!”

Queen looks like he does want to say something, maybe even something earnest, but Laurel storms out of the car before he can.

“Ouch.” Len says once she’s gone and it’s just him and Queen in an awkward quiet, which has the other man sighing and almost leaning his head against the steering wheel.

“Just get out of the car.”

 

* * *

 

He follows the path Laurel has taken into the hospital, Queen not fair behind him. When they get to Thea’s room she looks like she just clawed her way out of hell, or at the very least, like she fought someone who did.

There’s also a blonde woman with glasses sitting in one of the chairs, though she stands up and starts talking as soon as the three of them enter.

“Why do you guys have Leonard Snart with you?”

He raises an eyebrow at her, he’s almost positive he’s never met her before; something he hopes Laurel can read on his face when she looks back at him.

Apparently, the other woman gets the message too.

“He’s a bad guy.” She says, and she almost looks like she’s going to leave it at that. “When I went… on that business trip last year, he was… um… he was on a crime spree.”

Business trip? Ok, so everyone in this room is in the know, good.

“You were helping Barry?” He asks, and the looks that name earns him are priceless.

“How do you-”

“He’s not subtle.” He cuts to the chase, “And neither are any of you, so why don’t we get this all out of the way right now, hm?”

Well, no one’s objecting.

“So, for any newcomers, I was in Star City on the night your friend Sara died, in the alley she fell into to be specific. Fate certainly has a twisted sense of humor it seems, because my soul mark is a perfect match to her wounds, and it started aching soon as she was dead.”

“You have got to be kidding me.” The woman gasps, but he chooses to go on like he hasn’t heard it.

“Laurel showed up that night too, which I’m assuming you all figured out the next morning, since I know she didn’t leave that bar we brought the body to. Which, if you were working with Barry-”

He points to the woman. “And Sara was dressed in black leather and an eye mask that night-”

He moves his finger to Queen, “And you have apparently lied to Laurel about something that could’ve gotten you killed, not to mention Laurel had no moral qualms about dragging her sister’s dead body to a bar, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that you’re the Star City Arrow.”

He points to Thea, “Speedy,” points to Laurel, “And Black Canary.”

The entire group gapes at him, which he takes to mean he’s right, but since they’re not saying anything he turns his attention back to the mystery woman.

“So, where’s your mask?”

The woman stutters, “I… I don’t have one. I uh… I run the computers.”

Ah, their Ramon, good to know.

Queen looks at Laurel, who holds her hands up in an _“I didn’t tell him any of this,”_ sort of gesture, and it ends up being Thea who coughs and breaks the silence.

“Ok,” she says, “This is good.”

Suddenly Queen is at her bedside like he’s only now realized how bad of shape she’s in.

“Are you ok?” He asks, and she nods.

“I’m fine.” She promises weakly before coughing again, as though her injuries are actively contradicting her. “Now that we’re all on the same page we need to focus, because Sara is going to come back.”

“What?” Laurel asks, worry and hope warring in her eyes.

“How do you know?” Queen asks at almost the same time, and the look Thea gives them both is so sorry that it has Len’s stomach twisting in knots.

“Because she’s hunting me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Laurel and Oliver are always soulmates to me!


	7. The Belly of the Beast

So apparently when Laurel said Merlyn killed Sara in the first place she really meant Merlyn used mind control on is own daughter in order to coerce _her_ into killing Sara, her friend.

Leonard knew he should’ve killed that bastard.

Oh well, nothing they can do about it now except try and fix it.

Between Thea and Queen they’ve come to the conclusion that Sara’s body is alive, but her soul isn’t it, which explains nearly everything from his mark to her animalistic behavior. The only thing it doesn’t explain is how they save her, if there even is any saving her, but Queen seems oddly optimistic about that for a guy who was all sorts of pissed three hours ago.

“So what exactly is the plan here?” He asks of Laurel while they’re stashed away behind the bar of Verdant. Apparently it’s the secret base for team Arrow; he’s almost annoyed he didn’t figure that one out.

“Subdue Sara. From there, Ollie has a plan.”

He eyes her, letting his expression show how much he doesn’t trust that. Call him crazy, but he doesn’t like trusting people solely on their word. Hell, if he had interrogated her a little further at the start of all this they might never have gotten into this mess, or at the very least, he wouldn’t be involved.

“Is he yours?” He asks, and Laurel actually stops in the middle of pulling on her glove.

She starts again, after a moment, and doesn’t speak until she’s done.

“Yes.” She says, looking up to meet his eyes.

He raises an eyebrow.

“You said he’s lied to you.”

“And I’ve lied to him.” She reminds him quickly, “About more than Sara.” She adds when he opens his mouth to defend her, but with his defense taken away he promptly clamps his mouth shut.

“Ollie and I aren’t perfect, Leonard. Most soulmates aren’t. But you work at it, and at the end of the day, there is no one I would rather have by my side than Oliver Queen.”

He isn’t sure he believes that, in fact he is almost positive that that statement right there sums up every reason he’s never been sure if he really believes in soulmates. Shouldn’t something like that be easy? If you’re really destined to be with someone, isn’t it supposed to be they’re the one person in the world you can stand being around all of the time? The one person you can trust?

Then again, nothing in this world is ever that simple, why should soulmates be any different?

A scream sounds out from the main floor of the bar in that instance, and case in point, his is half dead and just crashed through a skylight in a murderous rage.

Queen is already pulling Sara off Thea by the time he and Laurel jump out, and all in a blur they’re suddenly flying back as Sara clocks them both across the face.

He hears Oliver shout for his friend John to get Thea to safety, and Sara holds her own despite having three opponents.

What he wouldn’t give for his cold gun right now.

But, while she’s occupied with him and Laurel ganging up on her Queen manages to get a shot in with tranquilizer arrow, and Sara drops.

His breath comes out unsteady, his chest heaving as he looks down at Sara’s still form face down on the ground. Laurel gets to her knees beside her sister, rolling her over, and so he looks over to Queen.

“What now?”

“Now?” Queen huffs, still catching his own breath, “I cash in on a favor.”

 

* * *

 

A favor, right.

You know, most people when they cash in on a favor it’s with a friend or a neighbor. Leonard wasn’t expecting something as mundane as that, not with this group, and he’s cashed in some pretty odd favors over the years himself; getaway drivers, hackers, even a sharp shooter. But when a man Queen has only described as a wizard walks through the doors into the Arrow bunker he can’t for the life of him figure out why he is still surprised.

“Alright,” the man announces his own entrance, and he doesn’t look like any wizard Leonard would’ve pictured, with his loose tie and the plucking of a cigarette from his mouth. “How is it that you ended up with a soulless assassin?”

“Blame Laurel.” Queen grumbles, meanwhile the woman in question takes a business card from their visitor, crinkling her brow as she reads it.

“John Constantine: Exorcist, Demonologist, and Master of the Dark Arts.” Sure, why not? “So what, you’re going to preform some sort of exorcism on my sister?”

Well, at the very least, he isn’t the only one who thinks this is crazy.

“No,” The wizard, Constantine, quickly contradicts Laurel. “An exorcism is a removal of demonic possession. What your sister needs is restitutionem. The restoration of her soul to her body.”

“And you can do that?” Leonard asks, arms crossed as he forces his eyes away from the sight of Sara’s body strapped to the table below them and onto the man who is supposedly going to fix this whole mess.

“Done it before handsome.” He answers with a shrug and a wink, the kind that isn’t completely joking and all Leonard can bring himself to do is close his eyes and sigh.

No, just no.

He can deal with a lot of things. An undead soulmate, vigilantes, and said undead soulmate’s sister being on her last marble. But while the bad boys have been his type once or twice in the past, being hit on by the exorcist is where he’s drawing the line.

“What do we need to do?” He asks, his voice as well as his body tense and serious. Constantine hardly looks deterred for a minute, and instead reaches into his pocket and pulls out, of course, a dirty scroll.

“Apologies.” He says, handing the scroll over to Felicity. “I didn’t have time to translate that from its original Aramaic.”

While Felicity reads the list Constantine makes a comment about how he would’ve dropped by sooner had he known Queen was surrounded by so many pretty girls, apparently this guy doesn’t read the tabloids.

Still, he said girls, so at least he can take a hint.

And with that, Queen pulls their supposed savior away.

“Where did Oliver find this guy, The Luxor?” John asks as he watches them go, so at least this is weird even for their group.

Then again, that thought might be more terrifying than comforting.

Anyway, Constantine sets up what is by far the weirdest pentagram Leonard has ever seen; painted on the fluorescent light floor of the bunker with greasepaint and candles set along the outer edges. Once he’s done Queen lifts Sara from the table and lays her with great care in the center of the design.

And, of course, that is when the elevator dings.

They all turn their attention to it, obviously, and while Leonard has no idea who he was expecting to come walking out of the doors he does know it wasn’t a bald, middle aged man in a suit.

“Hey, you’re never going to believe this, but-” The man stops, noticing them all staring at him. “What are you guys doing?”

It’s far from his place here to answer that question, but the interesting thing is that no one else does. They all just stare at him, the tense atmosphere of the room suddenly feeling like it’s been turned up to an eleven.

“What?” The man asks as he steps closer to the platform, trying to see the floor Queen is still kneeling on.

“What the heck is...?” His footsteps trail to a stop, he’s gotten close enough to see Sara lain in the center of the pentagram, and suddenly Leonard’s mind is thrown back to Laurel standing in front of a freshly resurrected Sara, talking about their father and how happy he was going to be when he saw her back.

“What is this?” He finally asks in a whisper, “What... What are you doing to my baby?”

“Quentin-”

“Why is she here?” The older man demands, cutting Queen off. “Why is she? What are you? What did you?”

“It’s my fault daddy.” Laurel interjects, stepping forward, and her head may be held high but from his angle Len can see that she’s shaking.

“What?” He father asks, his voice still hushed and weak, his face pale like he might faint.

“I… used The Lazarus Pit to try and bring Sara back.”

“You what?” Her father sounds more confused, and maybe a hair disappointed, than angry, so Len stays where he is in the back of the group for now.

“Laurel,” the older man says, “Don’t you know how dangerous that is?”

“Yes.” Laurel defends herself, clearly growing more confident. “But it brought back her body, and now Constantine is here to bring back her soul.”

To his credit, her father _hasn’t_ passed out yet, and finding out your daughter has more or less been brought back from the dead and she needs her soul restored, that’s a lot to take in. He does waver on his feet a bit, but not concernedly so, and eventually his gaze moves from his older daughter to the rest of her friends, and then specifically to him.

“Ok… so what’s with the career criminal?”

Len raises his eyebrows in surprise for a moment, but Laurel is the assistant DA, so it really wouldn’t surprise him if her father were involved with the law in some way.

Laurel, on the other hand, does look surprised when she whips her head back to him, and then back to her father.

“He’s Sara marked.” She confesses, and promptly starts talking again before her dad can pass judgment on that out loud. “I involved him in all this, I thought it might help Sara.”

“And indeed it will Love.” Constantine speaks up, drawing everyone’s attention to him now, Leonard’s in particular. “Restoring a soul is a tricky thing, not to mention a risky one, but it will help immeasurably if her soulmate is around.”

He exchanges a look with Laurel, and her expression is near begging, as if she really thinks he might still say no even after they’ve come this far.

“What do I need to do?”

Constantine opens his mouth to answer, but Felicity interrupts him, approaching from the far end of the bunker with a bowl and a peacock feather.

“Ok,” she says, “I think I got everything you asked for. Although I am not entirely sure what you need a dead peacock feather for.”

In response, Constantine takes the feather and itches his back with it.

The entire group shares a mix of concerned and disgusted glances, and Len is starting to side with John in wondering where in the hell Queen found this guy. But once he’s done he takes the bowl and looks inside, and then holds it up for them all to see.

“Now, I’ve only got enough juice to send myself and two of you to the other realm, and as I already mentioned, the chances of this working are almost triple if Sara’s soulmate goes. So the question is, whose lucky number two?”

“I’m sorry.” Len interrupts, “Other realm?”

“Aye Mate.” Constantine confirms like it’s as casual as the weather. “Sara’s soul is likely trapped in the realm between our world and the beyond. Souls gravitate to their mates in this world, an in that one, having you there just might mean the difference between her coming back or not.”

“I wasn’t planning on backing out.” He says before Laurel can so much as think about setting those doe eyes on him again. “Just would like to know where it is I’m going.”

Constantine nods, and Laurel steps forward.

“I’ll go to.” She volunteers, and the looks of worry on the faces of both Queen and her father are clearly of protest, but they say nothing.

“Alright then,” Constantine agrees. “Step right up then, center of the circle, and please take each other’s hands.”

Of course.

He glances at Laurel, anxious. She doesn’t look much better than he feels about all this, but she follows Constantine’s instructions and so he moves to follow, what choice does he have?

Before he can step over the line of the circle, however, he feels a hand on his shoulder and turns his head to see Queen there with an admittedly terrifyingly stern look on his face.

“Make sure they get back. Both of them.” It’s an order more than a request, and pressing his mouth into a firm line Leonard nods before shrugging the other man’s hand off of him and joins Laurel, standing on the opposite side of Sara.

He only hesitates for a moment in taking her hands, needing to remind himself that he has shown this woman his mark, and by consequence his scars. He can deal with holding her hands for five minutes.

“Oh, there’s uh, one more thing.” Constantine adds just as they get set, and Len glares over at the other man. “Whatever’s locked her soul away, it’s not going to give it over without a fight.”

Well, that much he could’ve figured.

Even if he wanted to back out at the revelation of that he couldn’t. Constantine takes out his lighter and ignites his bowl of whatever the hell he had Felicity get him, and soon as he’s straightened up his eyes roll back in his head and he starts chanting in what Leonard is pretty sure is Latin.

He can’t look at Laurel during this, or anyone for that matter, not when he can feel the fear creeping up inside him. So he doesn’t look at anyone, instead he looks down, and Sara is below him but her eyes are closed and-

And then he has to look up because the lights go out, leaving nothing but the candles. He feels Laurel’s light grip on his hands turn to a squeeze, like she’s using him to keep herself from jumping out of the pentagram or circle or whatever it is as the entire bunker begins to shake. Constantine hasn’t wavered at all, not even when he hears Sara’s pained gasp and he looks down to check on her but…

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

The sounds are gone and… what was he thinking about?

“OLIVER!”

Laurel’s scream of sheer terror is the first thing to bring him back, like waking up abruptly from a dreamless sleep, and it all comes flooding back within seconds.

Sara, the restitutionem, another realm.

Laurel is shaking when he raises his head, her breath coming out in shuttering squeaks that stabilize with each one.

“Ah, well.” Constantine pants as they all start getting their bearings. “I’ve had worse hangovers.”

Len would roll his eyes if he weren’t so busy taking everything in.

The first thing he notices is that he and Laurel have, somehow, each changed their clothes. Laurel is now in her Black Canary getup, missing only the mask and complete with her tonfa’s. For him, he somehow has been put into his Captain Cold gear; goggles around his neck and cold gun in its proper holster.

Around them everything looks like Nanda Parbat, but the sound echoes off the walls as if they’re artificial.

“HELP!”

Speaking of echoing sound.

Laurel takes off after the voice, which sounds so innocent and nothing at all like the animalistic growls he’s heard from his soulmate thus far, yet he knows even before Laurel moves that it’s Sara.

“Laurel no!” Constantine shouts, chasing after her and Len follows, though he isn’t sure whose side to take.

They run through a door, down a hall and through another door…

Only to end up in the exact same chamber they arrived in.

“The hell?” He sneers, hand going to his gun out of habit.

“HELP!” Sara’s voice squeals again from somewhere past the door, and Laurel tries to run again but this time Constantine manages to stop her.

“I’m not going to just stand here!” She argues, even as she allows Constantine to nudge her back.

“And I don’t expect you to.” He says, and suddenly he’s eyeing him. “But we need a tour guide.”

It’s a stupid response, logically, but Leonard still twists and looks past himself, unsurprised to find no one there.

However, that would mean…

“Me?”

“Aye,” Constantine nods, “Your souls are drawn to one another, and that is especially potent here. So close your eyes, take a deep breath, and listen mate.”

He looks at the other man like he’s crazy, a possibility he hasn’t totally ruled out, and debates arguing. He can hear Sara just as well as the next person, and it sounds to him like she’s shouting from beyond that wormhole of a door. But they don’t have many options here, so stupid as it feels he tries it.

He closes his eyes, inhaling deep through his nose and opening his ears. He can still hear her screams, and when he tries to hone in on them something inside of him blocks them out. He still hears them, but it’s like background noise almost. They’re still coming from the same place, but he feels this pull in his chest, something he’s never felt before and he certainly couldn’t describe if anyone were to ask. It isn’t hearing, it’s feeling, like her soul is calling out to his without saying a word.

He opens his eyes, suddenly focused on a shadow in the corner of the room.

“This way.” He says, and starts off with Constantine and Laurel trailing behind him.

As they draw closer it becomes more obvious that the shadow is the entrance of a tunnel, a hall lit with candles like those in Nanda Parbat. It gets brighter up by the end, until they reach an open door, and through that the first thing they see are two League of Assassins guards standing in front of the Lazarus Pit.

Which Sara’s head is poking out of as she screams and splashes around.

“This is what locked away Sara’s soul?” Laurel asks, and Len will admit it’s a little underwhelming.

“How the human mind perceives it, anyway.” Constantine explains, which makes a little more sense, but he doesn’t want to dwell on that.

He just wants to get Sara away from it.

The two guards draw their swords and he breaks out his gun.

“What’s the plan now?” He asks, and of course Laurel is already charging the pit, which earns a sigh from John.

“Take care of these jokers.” He practically groans, clearly he _had_ some type of formal plan but whatever it was Laurel just ruined it.

Still, he can get on board with that.

He freezes them both before they can get too close, and it only takes one punch each from Constantine to shatter them. He looks over at the warlock, because that was too easy, but Constantine only shrugs and joins Laurel at the edge of the pit.

“Sara!” She shouts, because shit Sara is _drowning._ She’s desperately treading water, which is bubbling violently all around her, her head bobbing up and down at the surface as her arms flail around.

“LAUREL HELP!” She screams, like she’s still calling to them from a million miles away. “HELP ME!”

“Sara! Sara grab my hand!”

Sara tries, but when she does at least six shriveled up arms launch out from under the surface of the water and start pulling her back.

Well, he certainly isn’t going to be sleeping tonight.

To make matters worse, the sound of a sword unsheathing comes from behind and turning his head Leonard sees they have been joined by another assassin, this one looking twelve times as deadly as the last two.

“Help Laurel.” Constantine orders him before he can so much as think about taking out his gun. “You need to work together to get her out, I’ll handle our new friend.”

He rushes off without giving Len any time to argue, and while that is probably the worst plan tactically he isn’t about to question the logic of the man who literally brought them into a realm between life and death. Instead he turns and grabs Laurel by the waist without really thinking about it, acting on instinct, and yanking her away from the pit’s edge before she can be pulled in and add to their problems.

“Sara!” He shouts, even as Laurel screams her own protest at is actions. He reaches out his hand, though that hadn’t really worked for Laurel, and Sara barely manages to graze his fingers but… her mark is glowing.

The jagged circle around her wrist has turned a bright gold color, and it seems to pull her towards him like a magnet. More hands come out from the water and pull at her but somehow she manages to get closer, until she can grasp his wrist firmly.

“Don’t worry.” He says as he pulls her, Laurel coming to his side and reaching for her sister’s other hand. “Don’t worry I’ve got you. I’ve got you, just swim towards me.”

She’s still crying, and without letting go of her he and Laurel climb up on the edge of the pit to get a better angle. It takes all their strength to yank her up, her kicking at the zombie hands of the pit as they do, and he just barely sees her toes finally step onto the pit’s edge when…

Everything goes white.


	8. Bring me to Life

You would think that being shot in the stomach with three arrows would hurt but it doesn’t, not after the first one. The fist one hurt, this piecing pain that probably should’ve had her screaming, and then with the second and third it’s just… dull. This sad ache, and then the ground is gone, everything is gone. The only thing she can feel is the wind on her face and a warmth in her stomach. What she wouldn’t give to have Laurel right now, or her dad, or Ollie. What she wouldn’t give…

There are flashes, sometime after.

It feels like she’s been asleep forever, and now she’s finally dreaming. Everything is a haze, more out of focus than any other dream she’s ever had, and she only feels sort of conscious.

She sees some things through the haze.

Nyssa is the first, then Thea, and… something takes over. The haze gets worse, and she feels angry. She wants to kill, to see blood decorate the walls and to hear the screams of sorrow and pain.

She’s been asleep again, or the dream stopped, and now it’s started again. She sees Laurel this time, out of focus but there, and she wants to ask what’s going on but she can’t. She can’t bring her mind to form the words. Another fuzzy figure appears behind Laurel and the anger is back but it leaves as soon as it’s come and then there’s a man. She likes him. She’s never met him before, but there’s something about him she can’t explain, some deep-seated instinct that whispers to her that he is safe. Some kind of pull towards him. Something. Something…

He fades out, at some point, but then he’s back. He’s back, but something’s wrong. She can’t move. Anywhere. It’s all a haze. There’s someone in front of her, she thinks it’s him but… who is he? Why can’t she move? The anger is back. There’s somewhere else she needs to be. She has to get out of here and tear somebody apart. But she can’t. It’s so cold down here. Where even is she? What…

When the haze comes back again it’s different. Less clear but more real. She sees a blur, here and there, like she’s looking at something underwater. She hears voices, screams, and she thinks some of them might even be here own. There’s a hand, she reaches for it but it’s gone before she can grab it, and then another one takes its place.

The sense of safety returns.

She feels warm for the first time in she isn’t even sure how long. It starts in her wrist, from her mark she realizes, and then she feels his strong fingers on her skin.

It’s the first thing she’s felt in what seems like a lifetime.

Suddenly she’s alerted to the weight of something else on her shoulders, her waist, her ankles, but she struggles and kicks at it all.

“Don’t worry.” His voice sounds like it’s a million miles away and bouncing off the walls, but it’s the first sound she’s really heard in so long. Even the screams, even now, they all sound like her ears are stuffed with cotton. But his voice is clear and calling out to her as she feels another weight on her other hand and she doesn’t question the safety of it.

“Don’t worry I’ve got you. I’ve got you, just swim towards me.”

Swim, right; she knows how to do that.

She kicks her legs, lets him and the other- Laurel; it’s Laurel. She lets them pull her arms, and when her body begins to break the surface of the water the air feels cold and foreign, and everything is so much clearer.

However, it only lasts for a second.

It feels like waking up from a dream.

Maybe it was a dream, but she’ll worry about that later.

Sara squints at the familiar lights of the bunker, rolling her head to one side to see about six pairs of feet, glancing up to see their owners all staring down at her.

Her heart skips a beat when she sees one of those owners, the man from her dream, which means…

She doesn’t have the slightest idea what it means.

She starts to sit up and hears Laurel whispering her name, so she turns her head just in time to see her sister get to her knees beside her and wrap her in a hug.

She still has no idea what’s going on, how long she’s been out, but she does know that rooftop was real and…

She died.

She felt herself die.

She has come too close to death too many times to let herself believe it was only that. No, she died, and yet somehow, she is still here.

 

* * *

 

Leonard watches, albeit awkwardly, as Sara embraces her sister and then her father with tears in her eyes. The sight hits him like a ton of bricks, much harder than he’d expected it to, as he realizes that his role in all this is now over.

Sure, he could stay and introduce himself to Sara. That’s probably what Laurel expects him to do, but if he has learned anything these last few days it’s that Laurel’s expectations are not always, if ever, realistic.

Really, what is she expecting? Her sister just came back from the dead. Does she really think she’ll want to dive headfirst into the matter of suddenly having her soulmate around? What if she doesn’t even like him?

Why does he care about that?

His eyes stay on the sight of her sitting on the ground with tears in her eyes and a smile on her face as she clings to her father and Laurel.

No, he decides. She loves them so much, clearly, and she deserves that simple, uncomplicated love.

She deserves much better than him.

He excuses himself from the group, walking back to the elevator and showing himself out. He gets as far as the edge of the parking lot when, of course, someone calls out from behind him.

“Hey.” The voice is of none other than Constantine. “Hey, you’re just going to leave her Mate?”

He debates lying, very seriously. He could say he’s just getting some air, or going to bring back food, or any number of things. But he gets the feeling this man would see right through it.

“She’s back.” He says, “I never planned on sticking around longer than that.”

For the record, he doesn’t look angry or offended like Laurel or any of the others might have. Instead he grins, like him walking out of that bunker is the funniest thing he’s heard in a long time.

“You’re her soulmate.” He reminds him, “The universe doesn’t give a bloody damn about what you planned.”

Ain’t that the truth.

“Yeah, well she deserves a better soulmate than me.”

“Hell you’re thick.” The warlock, wizard, or whatever the hell Constantine is, counters when he tries to continue on his way. “Listen Mate, I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard that line, even said it myself a couple times. We all think we’re not good enough-”

“I’m a thief.” He sneers, “And a liar. I hurt people-”

“And she’s an assassin.” The other man is quick to throw that in his face. “I don’t know Sara, just met her today. But soulmates aren’t about being good enough, they’re about being right.”

He stares Constantine down, for a moment, and then he turns on his way.

“Laurel told me how you found her.” He hears shouted after him. “You really think it’s a coincidence you were in that alley on that night, in that precise moment?”

He stops. He doesn’t want to, but he does, and then because he is a firm believer in his own plans, he keeps moving with every intention on heading back to Central City.

 

* * *

 

Sara goes with Laurel back to her apartment, after spending a good hour in the bunker with all of their friends of course. It’s all so unreal, that she has actually been brought back from the dead. Of course Laurel is fuming because that mystery man, Leonard, snuck out without so much as a goodbye. Apparently he’s her soulmate, and when she asked Laurel said the story of how she found him is both complicated and not hers to tell. Of course, knowing Laurel, Sara will give that two days before it comes out.

Although, if she’s being honest, she isn’t sure she wants to know. She does at some point, but maybe not right now. At the very least, she isn’t anywhere near as pissed as Laurel is that he left.

Or, maybe he didn’t.

When they open the door he’s there, sitting on Laurel’s couch, and Laurel looks like she’s torn between relief, worry, and downright offense.

“How did you get in here?” She asks, after gaping for a moment of course.

“I’m a career criminal.” He says with a deadpan, in a very non-joking tone. “Picking locks is a skill of mine.”

Her sister looks around the apartment, checking to see if anything’s missing, and then at her. There’s a question in Laurel’s eyes, asking if she wants to be alone with him, and she nods her answer.

Even if she has no idea what she’ll say to him.

“I have to go help Ollie with his campaign.” She says, subtlety is not her strong suit, and with one wary glance back at them she gathers her purse and is out the door.

Leaving them alone.

Great.

Sara stares awkwardly around the room, and then to the soulmate in front of her. He looks about as uneasy with all this as she feels; something she supposes is a good thing. She can’t help but notice that the majority of his skin is covered, either with his dark jeans or his even darker sweater, and she can’t see his mark. It’s also that observation that leads her to notice that he can’t see hers, because she is standing with her left hand firmly clasped over it.

That’s as good a place to start as any, she supposes, and so taking half a step towards him she holds up her wrist.

“This mean anything to you?” She asks, and she isn’t all that surprised when he shakes his head.

“No,” he drawls, and damn, if that isn’t a nice voice. “But then again, I doubt the arrow marks on my chest would’ve meant much to you before this.”

Ok, so he’s definitely her soulmate here, no mistake.

“Right.” She says, hands on her hips. “Sorry about that.”

He shrugs, “It’s alright.” She says, “Sorry you can’t cover yours. Whatever it is.”

She shrugs, inspecting her mark.

“It’s ok, better than most tattoos.” He snorts, apparently amused by that, and then they’re back to the awkward silence.

“Look, I don’t want anything from you.” He eventually says, “Laurel thought I should be around while you came back. She thought it would help somehow-”

“It did.” The words are out of her mouth before she can really think it over, and he looks surprised to hear them, so she can’t bring herself to regret it.

“I don’t remember much about these past few days.” She says, her hand going to her head to stave off a headache that isn’t quite coming on yet, but she’s sure it’ll get here.

“But wherever I was, when you and Laurel got there, I didn’t really notice until I heard you.”

He looks like he doesn’t really know what to do with that, she doesn’t either. She doesn’t understand it, at all. When she was younger she was a bit more of a believer in magic and soulmates, and while she still knows that soulmates exist somehow, her adult life hasn’t done much to encourage a belief that they will conquer all evils.

“Constantine said souls are drawn to each other in that realm more than in this one, don’t ask me the mechanics of that, but it might have had something to do with it.”

Right, that makes some sense, about as much as her being alive at all anyway.

“Right…” she trails, and they’re back to silence, with their eyes both focused anywhere aside from on each other.

“I should go.” He eventually says, brushing by her quickly, and while a piece of her heart does sink with the exclamation, how is she supposed to stop him?

“Ok.” Is all she says, and not bitterly either. “Thank you.”

He turns back, half out the door; just long enough to look at her and for a moment she thinks he might stay.

“You’re Welcome.”

 

* * *

 

It hurts.

Sitting on a train on its way back to Central City, Leonard finds that leaving Sara behind hurts more than he ever thought it would, more than he ever planned on allowing it to.

He doesn’t know why it hurts so much. He never planned on sticking around; he even tried to leave without saying goodbye.

Maybe that would’ve been easier; to leave her with the pain of being abandoned and him with the guilt, rather than the other way around. He feels almost worse thinking like that, he isn’t heartless, but still, it’s been a long time since someone last cast him aside and he wasn’t prepared.

He understands, Sara was just brought back from the dead; he wouldn’t want to deal with his soulmate being thrown at him either. It’ll be easier to just move on with his life, pretend like none of this ever happened.

It’s what he wanted going into this week, after all, and it’s what he did a year ago after Sara crashed through his windshield.

Which brings his mind back to Constantine and his talk about soulmates being drawn together, no matter the realm they’re in.

_“You really think it’s a coincidence you were in that alley on that night, in that precise moment?”_

He really hopes, for both their sakes, it was exactly that.


	9. Intertwined

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, so sorry this chapter took so long! It's finals season, also I am graduating this year, so stress. Plus there was Easter and frankly this chapter gave me a lot of writers block. I hope it's worth the wait.

As soon as he gets back Lisa demands to know where he’s been.

“We had a plan!” She rants, pacing around the kitchen of their more common safe house, grabbing meat and whatever else she’s stocked the fridge with to make soup.

She does her best thinking, or in this case ranting, when she has something to occupy her hands such as cooking. However that doesn’t mean she does her best cooking when she’s ranting. Her mind is too occupied by anger to remember all the steps, so he’s going to be a little weary of this soup later.

“We had everything set, we were risking our necks Lenny! Mick and I were about to risk going back to jail just to get you out!”  


“You wouldn’t have gotten caught.” He assures her, her plans normally go off pretty well, but she huffs anyway.

“And for what?” She demands, “You weren’t even there! I went in to visit you, and tell you about the plan, and you weren’t even there! You’d been bailed out! By who?”

He sighs, he still hasn’t decided if he really wants to get into that with her. She’ll get all excited and for what? Someone he is probably never going to see again? No, she won’t have that. If he tells her the truth about where he’s been she’ll be pushing him out the door and she won’t let him back until he goes and gives things with Sara a chance.

“It’s complicated.” He settles for, which earns him an eye roll and her a splatter of hot broth as she non-too-carefully dumps chunks of potatoes into her pot.

“Complicated.” She sneers, grabbing a rag and wiping off her wrist. “What’s so complicated? Someone springs you for once in your life and you can’t even tell me who in the hell they were?”

He doesn’t reply to that. Instead he sits there and lets her wear herself out, she’ll get over it eventually.

Mick has questions too, but he takes it a lot better when Len refuses to tell him. He doesn’t need to know. He’ll never admit it, but Leonard knows his friend takes some pleasure in knowing he isn’t the only one living with that constant ache in his chest.

Something that feels strange to suddenly be living without.

He’s still getting used to it when he starts planning another job, he needs to show that he went through the trouble of getting out on bail for a reason. Problem is there aren’t too many big targets in town at the moment, so he accompanies Mick down to Saints and Sinners to get a drink and look through the newspaper for a next job.

Which means Mick is over at the bar while he’s sitting in a booth looking through the paper.

He looks up by chance, just to see where Mick is, and as he does the door opens and in walks a very familiar blonde.

She looks around, and he doesn’t look away fast enough to avoid locking eyes with her. She looks surprised to see him, and the same could be said for himself. Whatever she’s here for she abandons her intentions of it and makes a b-line over to his table.

“What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

She scowls and takes a seat across from him. Naturally his eyes flit over to Mick, who does seem to have noticed his visitor but he also doesn’t appear overly concerned, so he can deal with that later.

“Did Laurel send you to spy on me?”

“Hardly,” he snorts, “I’m going to assume she didn’t tell you I’m from Central?”

“Obviously not.” She growls with a roll of her eyes. “No wonder she didn’t fight me harder on leaving.”

He waits a second for her to expand on that, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t leave him either, instead she starts twisting the wrapper from his straw around her fingers.

“So what are you doing here?”

She doesn’t have to tell him if she doesn’t want to, she certainly doesn’t owe him an explanation. But still, he’s curious. If she didn’t know he was here then why did she leave Laurel and her father, and Oliver and Thea, and come all the way out here to Central City?

And would she have come if she had known he would be here?

And, how on Earth did she end up in  _this_ pub?

She shrugs, “My mom lives here.” She explains, and he nods. “I thought I’d come visit her now that I’m back.”

He should let the conversation die right there. It makes sense. A mother would want to see her recently returned from the dead daughter. It’s more than enough of an explanation. But she’s still here, and still avoiding his eyes.

“And how’s that going?”

She looks up at him, her eyes set in a hard glare.

And that’s when they hear the bottle smash.

She whirls her head around and he looks past her over to the bar, where Mick is throwing a punch at some poor guy roughly his size.

Oh no.

He sighs, a very resigned sound by this point in his life, he can’t take Mick anywhere.

“I’ll be back.”

 

* * *

 

“I’ll be back.”

Leonard gets up without so much as an explanation; heading over to the bar and grabbing the arm of the man they saw throw the punch.

Sara feels the hairs rise on her arms, the rage of the bloodlust starting to boil beneath her skin. She tries to look away from the fight, but her attention is glued to it. There is some sick, twisted part of her that wants to take in all of the violence and allow it to fuel her. She’s trying to quash that down, a horrible souvenir from the pit. She thinks she might be succeeding, so far the fight is underwhelming compared to the bloodshed she saw with The League.

But then she sees Leonard take a hard left hook to the face by one of the patrons and her vision turns red.

The last thing she registers is a growl coming from her mouth before everything turns to a blur of blood and screams.

* * *

 

“Mick!” Leonard shouts as he reaches the bar and grabs Mick’s arm.

His partner whirls his head back, but before he can ask what’s going on the idiot with blood pouring out of his nose takes another swing, and this time he’s on the receiving end.

His head reels back, his foot staggers a step but he manages to recover quick enough to either break the fight up or make it worse, he isn’t sure which right now. He shoves Mick out of the way and gets in the other guy’s face, pulling him down by the collar of his shirt.

And then he’s shoved forward into the guy’s chest.

There’s a sudden weight on his back, one that vanishes as quickly as it came, and before he can even try figuring out what it was he finds himself with a hard foot kicking his face back.

The whole place erupts into chaos right about then. He hears shouting from every direction, drunken patrons suddenly enraged with each other for no reason other than the fun of chaos. He isn’t the only one whose gone down, but when he gets back up and takes in the surroundings he can see who it is that has taken down most of the others; and why those left standing are starting to run.

It’s Sara.

She’s straddling a bloody body and tearing at it like an animal tears at its prey. He’s not even sure if the body is alive, but judging by the lack of screams he’s going to bet that it isn’t.

Suddenly he remembers everything Thea told him about a bloodlust and the pit asking for a price from its victims.

“Sara!” He shouts, scrambling for her. He wraps his arms around her and tries to pull her off the man, all logic and reason apparently gone from his mind. She doubles over on the body, but otherwise doesn’t appear to have noticed him. He looks around for Mick but his partner is nowhere in sight, but at least he isn’t among the bodies.

He realizes, suddenly, that if the criminals are retreating and there are this many bodies on the ground then the cops might show up sooner rather than later.

“Sara!” He tries again, pulling at her waist and trying to snap her out of this… this… this murderous frenzy.

That is a mistake.

She turns in his grasp and the next thing he knows he is pinned underneath her. She snarls above him like a wild animal, her nails digging into his wrists like claws and pinning him to the grimy floor.

“Sara…” There is fear in his voice, something he isn’t proud of. She growls again, her grip tightening on him.

“Sara snap out of it!” He shouts in a desperate attempt to bring her back. “Sara!”

Her grip loosens.

She blinks, and he does too, he hadn’t expected that to work.

“Leonard?” She asks, swiveling her head around to look in every direction. He can see the confusion on her face, along with the pain of knowing more or less what’s just happened.

More than he knows anyway.

“Come on.” He says, nudging her to get off of him. She complies quickly, hurriedly, and as he gets up he takes one last scan around the bar.

A lot of bodies, no Mick, and the faint sound of sirens.

Peachy.

“Let’s go.”

He’s surprised that she actually follows him out the back, into the alley and then around the corner. He has a safe house nearby, and while he normally doesn’t like bringing people outside of his crew there he’s willing to make an exception today.

The safe house isn’t far, just a few blocks over. It’s a small apartment on the second floor of an old building, the kind that cops usually overlook because it’s in a half-decent neighborhood.

Sara is quiet the whole way there; he even looks over his shoulder a few times to make sure she is still following. He doesn’t know who he’s angrier with; himself for leaving her or Laurel for letting her go. They both know about the bloodlust and how it affects Thea, a perfectly sentient person. They should’ve known that having her soul returned to her wouldn’t stop it from eventually falling over Sara as well.

“Here, get inside.” He commands more than offers her, but she follows him nonetheless. He closes the door behind himself and then locks it for good measure.

“So…” He drawls, ambling around to face her. “Bloodlust?”

Her eyes go wide.

“You know about it?”

“Thea told me.” She nods, accepting that. “You said you’re visiting your mom, does she know?”

She shakes her head, her arms fold across herself and she looks profoundly uncomfortable with this conversation.

Fair enough, he would be too if he came to the realization that a total stranger knew so much about him.

“No,” she answers, “I thought I could visit her and go before it took over.”

He wants to ask where she was intending to go, because he gets the feeling it wasn’t home. But he won’t press, he’s already in deeper than she likely wants him to be, not that he was given much of a choice in the matter.

“Right…” He drawls, what else is he supposed to say?

She looks around the apartment awkwardly, and suddenly it dawns on him what he has just done by bringing her here, to the both of them.

He’s trapped them here.

At least one person from that pub who saw everything, or at least enough, has got to still be alive, and while the cops normally don’t go to Saints and Sinners unless they need something or it’s an emergency, well, the massacre that just transpired certainly qualifies as an emergency. They’ll be looking around the area for her, and he’s sure someone there is still alive and coherent enough to give a description.

He glances around the space too, out of habit, and then back to her.

“Make yourself at home.” He finally says, “I’ve gotta make a call.”

He’s sure she’ll be pressing her ear to the bedroom door to hear that call, and he doesn’t mind, so long as she doesn’t mind him looking out for her.

 

* * *

 

Mick is three blocks away from the bar, heading for another, less bloody, one, when his phone starts buzzing in his back pocket. The I.D. says it’s Snart, and that’s a relief, since he hadn’t noticed if his partner got out or not in all the fun.

“Snart.” He barks into the phone, “Where are ya?”

“I’m at the safe house on Orange Street.” Is the answer he gets, in the form of a sneer, not even a hello. “Are you still alive?”

“Yeah, yeah. Hey, want to meet me down at that club? Heard they got some new dancers.”

“I’ll pass.” That’s a quicker decline than usual. “Mick, did you see who it was that started slitting throats?”

“You mean the blonde chick you were with?” He asks, cause he’s pretty sure she was the first one to turn the brawl deadly. “Yeah, I saw her jump ya. Who is she anyway?”

“That doesn’t matter.” Snart answers, more offended sounding than usual, huh. “What matters is she can’t get locked up. So if the cops ask you-”

“I ain’t no snitch.” He growls, and he debates asking again who the chick is but if Snart says it doesn’t matter then it doesn’t matter, not yet anyway.

“I know.” Snart says, “Just had to make sure.”

He hangs up without saying anything else, and Mick just rolls his eyes. Maybe this chick has to do with wherever Snart was all last week, he still hasn’t been too forthcoming on that.

Ah well, long as he doesn’t have to plan another prison break.

 

* * *

 

Sara knows she shouldn’t just trust Leonard, but she does. She may not know exactly what he’s seen in the time it took him and Laurel to bring her back, but she doubts that it was anything less than the absolute ugliest parts of her. As far as soulmates go, from what she’s seen so far, she thinks she’s lucked out.

She’s heard before of people who have been disappointed in their marked, shallow girls in high school mostly, who were marked for the nerd in the back of the class, or even for each other.

She never believed all of those stories, the world was so small back then, and marks can sometimes be misinterpreted. She always wondered if maybe she would have that problem, as the odd circle around her wrist could signify any number of things, and sometimes not even the person who the mark represents understands what it means. That is apparently the case for Leonard.

Still, she knows it’s him.

She remembers her mark feeling warm and the bright glow back in the soul realm. There’s something about him too, something she is just drawn to. Ok, that could be his voice or damn near anything else about him, she’ll admit, but it’s more than that. There’s a pull from somewhere inside her that wants him, and she suspects he might feel it to. Otherwise she doubts he would’ve gone halfway around the world to an assassin headquarters with Laurel.

So yeah, she trusts him enough that she trusts whatever call he is making isn’t going to bite her in the ass.

Besides, she has a call to make herself.

The apartment is small, it doesn’t take long for her to find the bathroom and lock herself inside. Once she’s done that she pulls out her phone and dials her mom’s number, pacing a tiny circle and biting on her nails as she suffers through five rings and then the voicemail.

“Hey mom, it’s me. Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye but… something’s come up. I have to go, now. I’ll uh… I’ll be back soon, ok? I love you, bye.”


	10. One Night Only

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I am again, SO sorry for how late this update is coming! I fell down the rabbit hole of another fic, which is now done, and this past week was senior week for me so I have been busy. But, I have now graduated, and updates shouldn't be so rare, hopefully.
> 
> I hope the length of this chapter makes up for how long you've all been waiting!

When Sara comes out of the bathroom Leonard is already sitting on the couch, and based on the look that he gives her she is going to assume that when he came out of his room and didn’t see her he at least partially believed she had taken off.

Maybe she should.

“I called my mom.” She says, like she’s a kid he has found himself suddenly responsible for, and can’t wait to be rid of. “Said goodbye.”

He nods, doesn’t ask why or if she’s sure, he just accepts it.

“Thank you.” She continues, “For getting me out of there.”

Another nod, “You’re welcome.”

And they’re back to silence.

She shifts uncomfortably on her feet, debating the pros and cons to leaving right now. Does he even want her to stay here? He may not have been thinking it through when he brought her here, not beyond wanting to get out of the bar anyway.

“I um… I should-”

He stands up and she closes her mouth, abruptly. She waits while he turns and comes around behind the couch, taking much longer than what is necessary. She keeps waiting while he leans himself against the back of the couch and folds his arms across his middle, slouching down a bit so that his eyes are level with hers.

“Stay the night.” It isn’t a command, or an order, but a simple offer followed by the incline of his head over to his door.

“Sleep in there,” she opens her mouth to protest that. “I can sleep in my sister’s bed.”

She closes her mouth. She could still argue it, say that she’s fine on the couch, but there would be no point to it now. She can’t put her finger on it, but there is something in his eyes that lets her know he isn’t doing this out of pity, or even totally out of obligation, and she can live with that.

“Just tonight.” She says, and he nods.

“Just tonight.”

She nods now, no argument, and so he pushes himself off the back of the couch.

“I’ll go get some beer.”

 

* * *

 

He’s lost it.

He has finally lost it.

That’s what Leonard keeps telling himself as he walks down to the nearest package store, only a block away, after leaving Sara in the safe house. A part of him thinks he’s crazy for that decision alone. He doesn’t know her, and he knows better than most that you should never leave a stranger alone in your house, or safe house even.

He doesn’t actually think she’ll rob him, no, he could smell a thief a mile away and she’s clean in that department. He should be more worried about her killing him in his sleep; he still isn’t sure as to how that bloodlust works exactly. Maybe he should call Laurel, let her know about what’s going on and possibly curse her out for sending Sara off to Central City without giving either of them a warning.

He sighs as he reaches his destination and heads inside; he’s starting to think that Laurel Lance is going to turn out to be a pain in his ass for a very long time.

He stops in his tracks at that thought, in front of a shelf and not yet a back fridge.

No.

Laurel Lance is going to be a pain in his ass for the foreseeable future, maybe, but not beyond that. It won’t get beyond that.

Sara is going to leave tomorrow morning, probably before the sun rises, and he’ll never see her again. After that he’ll probably get a nagging call or two from Laurel, but he’ll send her to voicemail, and then he’ll be done with the Lance sisters.

Constantine and his “meant to be” crap be damned.

He continues on his path through he store with that thought and grabs a rather large case of beer from the refrigerated section. He then brings his purchase over to the counter and hefts it up for the clerk.

“That be all?” The clerk asks, and he is about to say yes, but his eyes catch a simple little stack of playing cards on the edge of the counter, and in a split second decision that he is almost certain he will come to regret he grabs the top one and puts it on top of the beers.

“Yeah.”

He walks back to the apartment every bit as lost in his thoughts as he left. He doesn’t even know what he’s thinking about, aside from Sara. His mind is just wandering, between the idea of her leaving and the idea of her staying, as if he knows what he will do in either of those scenarios.

She’s still there when he gets back, and it’s not that he’s surprised but… Ok, he’s a little surprised.

She’s sitting on the couch, scrolling through her phone, but she looks up immediately when he enters.

He puts the beer down on the coffee table and then fishes through his pants pocket for the deck of cards, and holds it up to show her.

“You know how to play Gin?”

 

* * *

 

Leonard Snart, Sara learns very quickly, counts cards.

That’s fine; she isn’t playing to win anyway.

Still, at some point in the night their games start lasting longer, meaning he’s stopped counting and started playing.

Or, at the very least, he’s started thinking.

When she actually wins a game she can’t stop herself from smirking.

“You’re slipping Snart.” She tells him, a little smirk on her face that he doesn’t look very impressed by.

He looks at her and then back to his cards, and so they start another game in silence.

“I don’t recall giving you my name.” He finally drawls before throwing down the cards for his second hand, “Let me guess, Laurel?”

She hums, doing her best not to get distracted by those icy blue eyes of his, and instead she directs her eyes to her cards.

“She’s got a big mouth.” She says, placing her card down.

He snorts in agreement.

“That she does. No offence.”

“Hmm, none taken.” She says, and they go through another round. “Although I guess I shouldn’t complain, I wouldn’t be here if she knew how to keep her nose where it belongs.”

He hums, not exactly a sound of amusement but something close. They play a few more hands in silence; the only sound that of the stiff cards hitting the coffee table. Sara doesn’t feel so bad for the occasional glances she’s stealing at him, not when she can feel his eyes wandering to her every now and again.

“So how was Nanda Parbat?” She finally asks, and his eyes flick up with surprise at the question, like he wasn’t expecting her to speak again. She raises an eyebrow at him, a silent challenge.

He puts down another card.

“It was interesting.” He drawls, “I met Nyssa.”

Oh?

She puts down another card, and waits. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to say to that, if she’s supposed to say anything, and so they finish the game and he gathers the cards to shuffle in silence.

“She was surprisingly understanding, about the whole soulmate thing.”

She hums, “Nyssa isn’t the jealous type.” She muses, “Teasing maybe, but something tells me you guys were a little too busy for that.”

He nods in agreement and starts dealing out the cards.

“She was worried about you, you should let her know your soul is back.”

She presses her mouth into a firm line, considering that. The idea of seeing Nyssa again…

“Not right away.” She eventually says, “I need time, to get my head on straight. But I will.”

He accepts that, or she thinks he does at least, and they go on playing.

 

* * *

 

He told Sara he would sleep in Lisa’s bed, too bad Lisa doesn’t actually have a bed here.

It’s a two bedroom apartment, but mattresses aren’t exactly easy to steal and purchasing two with stolen funds is just plain sloppy. Usually it’s just him in this safe house anyway, sometimes Mick, but Lisa doesn’t come here much. When she is here he gives her the bed and he sleeps on the couch. There is an air mattress in the spare room that he has apparently passed off as her room, but the couch is more comfortable.

Unfortunately, if he doesn’t want Sara thinking he has a heart, he’s going to have to deal with it.

Sleeping on the air mattress isn’t the easiest thing, so it’s no wonder that Leonard is still wide-awake when the old digital clock reads 2:14 a.m. and he hears a scream.

He’s on his feet in an instant, his pathetic little throw blanket tossed to the floor as he scrambles for the door. He throws it open and, upon finding no emergency in the living room, he races for the other bedroom.

It’s somewhere between tripping over the coffee table, stumbling to the other bedroom door, and throwing it open that it processes within his brain that he can’t really see and his eyes need a minute to adjust in the darkness; there’s a difference between starring up at the ceiling and actively looking for a danger in the dark after all.

But there is no danger, at least none with a physical form. There is only Sara sitting in the middle of the mattress with his sheets wadded up and clutched to her chest, her body shaking with muttered whimpers.

“Sara?” He asks tentatively, and when he does she whips her head up like a frightened animal.

For a moment he jumps, afraid the bloodlust is back and this will be where he dies, but there is no danger in her eyes. Only fear.

She shutters as she swipes a hand across her eyes, her mouth opening like she wants to tell him something but all that comes out is a little squeak of a sob.

He’s by her side within a second; sitting on the very edge of the mattress and when she scoots away he tries not to take offence to it.

She doesn’t know him. They may be soulmates, apparently, but they don’t actually know each other and really, what business does he have trying to comfort her?

He feels useless just sitting here and waiting for her to calm herself down, but there isn’t anything more than that that he can do. So he sits, and he waits.

Eventually her whimpers even out into steady breaths, the tear tracks on her face dry up, and finally she finds the will to look at him.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice is a rasp, weak from the screaming and crying, and if that weren’t enough to hurt him all on it’s own the sheer fact that she’s apologizing certainly does it.

“Don’t worry about it.” He whispers, and he finds that he wants to reach out and touch her, to promise her that she’s safe with him.

But, his better judgment stops him.

It isn’t out of fear, or at least, not fear of her. He wouldn’t exactly call it a fear of rejection per say, more like a healthy respect for her personal space, and an intense refusal to ask about invading it just in case she says no.

Ok, maybe it is a tiny bit fear of rejection.

She slowly lowers her legs down, sniffling as she nods at his words.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He knows he shouldn’t have asked, she was about to lay back down and go back to sleep.

Re-surrender herself to the nightmares.

“I was there.” He adds before he can convince himself not to and she can shoot him down. “In that soul realm, or whatever it was. I saw the pit, the souls pulling you back, the demons, and…” He pauses, suddenly aware that this is likely going to have to be a two-way street. “And I’ve had my share of nightmares.”

He turns away from her, just a little. It’s a natural reaction for him when he knows he’s being watched in the way she’s watching him.

She must see that, because she adverts her eyes back to her lap.

She doesn’t say anything, and he can’t say he blames her, so after determining that she isn’t going to say anything he gets up and leaves her be.

 

* * *

 

“And I’ve had my share of nightmares.”

She doesn’t want to believe him. Everyone has had nightmares, they’re a part of life, but how bad they are is what varies from person to person, and she’s pretty sure her visions of being bound to the bottom of the pit as she drowns but never dies are a little more intense than what most people see.

But so far she’s gotten the impression that Leonard Snart isn’t most people.

She doesn’t know much about him. The first thing she learned about him, other than being her soulmate, is that he is apparently a career criminal. Aside from that she knows he apparently has a sister, he’s from Central City, and he followed Laurel to Nanda Parbat to help save her.

She feels the mattress dip and rise and looks back to where he’s now getting up. She watches as he leaves, the door opening to reveal the darkness of the rest of the apartment. No lights.

He disappears into that darkness and her heart hurts, so much so that even though she knows with every fiber of her being that it is a bad idea and she needs to keep to herself, that she needs to leave him in the morning like this was no more than a friend crashing for the night, she gets up and follows him.

She moves quicker than he does, and she wonders if it’s because she wants to get to him while he doesn’t want to leave her.

She hopes that’s it.

He’s in the center of the living room by the time she reaches the doorway. He’s stopped, facing away from her, but he turns back when her footsteps stop.

“Thank you.” She says, and she takes a careful step closer. He doesn’t move, so she takes another step, followed by another, until she’s standing in his space.

He stands steady in front of her, and now she’s close enough that even in the dark she can see the intensity of his eyes looking down at her.

She takes one more step closer.

“You don’t have to do this.” He whispers, his hand finding hers between them where it’d started to move of it’s own accord.

She falls back on her heels, when had she gone up on her toes? Regardless the look in his eyes isn’t as deterring as his words; in fact he almost looks hurt.

“I didn’t bring you back because I wanted something from you.” He explains, his voice a hitched whisper that raises the hairs on her arms.

He looks down at their hands, almost joined but not yet, her pinky twitching against his palm.

Then his eyes come back to hers.

She takes his hand fully.

“I know.”

She surges back onto her toes before he can try and stop her, and the sheer joy that floods her system when he kisses her back has her realizing that since she came back, she hasn’t really felt alive. Not until right now.

Her hand leaves his quickly, in favor of accompanying her other one in wrapping around his neck and pulling him closer. She’s desperate for him all of a sudden and the feeling of his hands gripping her hips only drives that feeling. Somewhere between a breath for air and the diving back in she jumps off the ground and he catches her easy. The feeling of his palms supporting her ass is enough to make her moan into his mouth and give a little buck of her hips against him and oh... oh… he’s getting excited.

“Don’t have to.” He breathes in a whisper between kisses and she rolls her eyes.

“I know.” She promises, punctuating her words with another deep kiss that has her teeth grazing his lip as she pulls away and brings her mouth to his ear. “But I want to.”

It feels like time freezes in that moment. It’s only a second of stillness, really, but it feels like so much longer. It’s made up for though, because the second that follows feels like it’s really ten crammed into one. He squeezes those amazingly large hands on her ass and brings her even closer than she already is. She smiles against the skin of his neck, parting her lips and letting her teeth come out to scrape at his pulse point. He moans against her, something that only serves to grow her smile, and the next thing she knows they’re moving.

He bumps her into a few corners while carrying her back to his room, muttering an apology into her ear between his kisses there every time.

When they finally make it to the bed they collapse in a heap, him mostly on top of her. The contact of her back on the mattress is enough to make Sara giggle like an excited teenager. Maybe it’s being with her soulmate or just being with someone again since coming back, or maybe it’s both, but she feels like she did her first time. Excited, scared, and happy. It’s like she doesn’t have any other care in the world, like nothing else matters in the world aside from the two of them.

Unfortunately, it all comes to a screeching halt when her fingers play at the hem of his shirt and his wrists circle firmly around hers.

She finds his eyes in the dark, and his gaze from what she can tell isn’t angry, or even sorry but… unsure.

“I…” He trails, something serious and painful in the expression on his face. She can be patient though, even if her libido is arguing with that. Yes, she wants him. She wants him so bad her fingers are twitching in his grasp. But she’ll wait. After all he’s done for her, and with the expectations of nothing in return, she can do that much for him.

No matter how much certain parts of her are arguing with that.

“I... I’ve been through a lot Sara, and it’s left me with some scars.”

She nods; it’s actually a relief, if that’s really all that his hesitance is anyway.

She sits up, though she doesn’t move out from under him, and places a tender kiss to his lips.

He doesn’t pull away from that, a good sign.

“Me too.” She says as she pulls away, her voice husky with desire even if that might not be the most helpful thing right now.

She meets his gaze as she leans back, her eyes deadly serious.

“You don’t have to tell me.” She says, he needs to know that much. “But were any of those things… like this?”

He blinks, processing, another good sign.

“No.” He finally answers; his voice quick and almost exasperated; like he hadn’t even considered she might worry some of his scars could be from unwanted… intimate… encounters.

“No, nothing like that.” And suddenly he looks horrified. “You?”

She shakes her head. 

“No.”

He nods, relieved.

“You don’t have to tell me where they’re from.” She repeats, “But I don’t mind them, so long as you don’t mind mine.”

His breath is still ragged from what they had been doing up until this point, calming down throughout the discussion, but it hitches again and the next thing she knows his lips are back on hers, his hands on her hips and bunching up the fabric of her borrowed t-shirt.

She’s already told him she wants this, already told him she is fine with him seeing her scars, but he still waits for her breathless nod to bring the shirt up over her head and damn, when the cold air of the room hits her newly exposed skin it’s enough to make her shiver.

She warms up quick though, because in the same moment that the chill finishes running down her spine he rips his shirt off and tosses it aside, and then proceeds to mold his half naked body against hers.

This, of course, brings his still concealed by his pants erection right into the crook of her legs and it’s enough to make her whimper.

“Pants off.” She huffs, and her fingers brush over the rough surface of what she vaguely catalogs as an old burn in the process, but that’ll be a discussion for another time.

That is, if she doesn’t kill him first for chuckling at her demand against her skin, turning her on more and not doing a damn thing about it.

“Someone’s eager.” He teases and, ok, normally she wouldn’t resort to this but fuck she is not in the mood to play games tonight.

“I’m the only one?” She asks, taking one of her hands and giving a quick squeeze and twist to his cock.

He shudders against her, his hands bracing themselves hard on her shoulders and so she nips at the crook of his neck to drive her point home.

“Come on.” She whispers, grinding her hips down on his like she’s half trying to take him through his pants, and maybe she is. “Tell me you don’t want to be inside me.”

The noise he gives to that is some strange cross between a moan and a whimper, and then next thing she knows he’s almost crashing their teeth together with a hard kiss that he doesn’t break even as he pulls her off him.

She only stays off long enough for them to get their pants off, of course, and for him to fumble a condom out of a drawer in the nightstand and put it on.

He’s barely gotten the condom on before she attacks him with more kisses.

“Not sure we need that.” She says against his lips, her fingers pointing to the thin latex that is now going to be between the two of them. “I doubt the pit left those parts of mine intact.”

That thought should hurt more, as she hadn’t considered that aspect of herself until this very second, and she had always assumed she would have kids one day. Maybe she’ll dwell on it more later, but right now the only thing she wants to think about is getting him closer to her than should be physically possible.

“Better safe than sorry.” He retorts, and ok, that’s fine, at least one of them is thinking with what’s between their ears rather than what’s between their legs.

Besides, he punctuates his words by pinching her very aroused clit between his index finger and thumb, so her thoughts kind of derail and she decides can live with the slight barrier and the lack of feeling him come inside of her so long as he keeps touching her like that.

“Fair enough.” She concedes, “Just get inside me.”

He only has time to snicker before she mounts him and oh… oh she isn’t ashamed to admit that she cries as he enters her. She hasn’t felt something like this in so long, since before the league, and feels so, so right.

He gasps when she gets on him, his back arching and she finds herself wrapping her arms around him to keep him from lying back completely. This can’t be the most comfortable position for him, this odd half kneeling, half sitting, with her more or less riding him. She’s trying to figure out what to do, and so when he grinds his hips into her she takes the opportunity to let herself go and crash back into the tangled sheets.

However, that doesn’t mean she’s about to let him do all the work.

She reaches her hands up to his broad shoulders and, again, files away the feeling of another scar under her fingers. This one is small but jagged, probably from a broken bottle or something of the like, but she won’t ask right now.

Right now, she has more important business to attend to.

She matches his grinding thrusts with some rough snaps of her own hips, and while it is far from gentle they quickly find themselves in a rhythm that is every bit as intoxicating as she’d been hoping for.

She has no shame in crying out the as she gets closer and closer to her climax. Her nails dig into his shoulders as her movements become more sporadic and jolty while his become harder and deliciously rougher. He is all but fucking her into oblivion by the time she comes, and as she rides out her orgasm on him she hears his cry and that’s how she’s know he’s tipped over the edge with her.

They lay there in the aftermath, her thoughts becoming coherent again sometime later. It’s there, with him still halfway inside her and the smell of sweat overtaking the room and settling into the deep blue sheets, that the words start to run through her mind.

_Just tonight._


	11. Leave the Door Open

When Leonard wakes up in the morning he is admittedly surprised that his legs are tangled up with those of someone else, he had completely expected Sara to sneak out in the middle of the night.

She’s on her side, facing away from him. The sheets are slipping down the curve of her hip, exposing her back to him and while he had felt her scars last night he hadn’t really gotten to see them.

They decorate all that is exposed of her back, curved and straight lines crossing over one another in a complete lack of pattern. It makes his teeth grit together. He had always wondered what his soulmate would think of his scars, but he never considered that he would be on that end of the stick as well.

Some of them may have been accidents, training sessions in The League of Assassins gone wrong, but some were clearly intentional. She’s been tortured, and probably in more ways than are visible here on her skin.

“You’re staring.” She suddenly comments, still facing the door, he hadn’t realized she was awake.

“Um…”

He can hear her smirk at his less than eloquent response, and the next thing he knows she’s rolled over and is taking her hand and curling her fingertips ever so carefully over the edge of the sheet where it half covers his chest.

She glances up at him for permission, and for a moment he considers not giving it. But he’s already looked at her, and even if he is partially certain she wouldn’t hold that against him he doesn’t exactly feel right about it. Besides, if those scars on her back tell him anything it’s that she won’t look at his as damage.

He doesn’t stop her when she begins to peel back the sheet, her movements purposely slow. He knows he’s holding his breath with each new scar that is revealed to her, his eyes laser focused on her gaze as it’s drawn to the various marks on his skin.

He can only imagine what she’s thinking about all the cigarette burns and jagged marks that tell the story of his life; of a less than ideal childhood to say the least. She gives a small gasp and her hands remain firm on the sheets, her fingers tangling in them like she is trying to keep herself from touching him.

Until she gives in.

She unravels her fingers from the thin blue fabric and glances up at him, and he nods his permission, but when she lays her palm flat against his chest it isn’t any of his scars that she goes for.

It’s his mark.

“A perfect match.” She muses and then meets his eyes again.

His eyes, rather embarrassingly, don’t stay focused on hers but instead are drawn automatically to her bare chest and the three faded blobs that reside there just under her breasts, only half hidden by the sheet at this point.

A perfect match indeed.

Suddenly, the slamming open of the front door interrupts the almost tender moment.

“Snart?” Mick’s rough voice calls out as both he and Sara jump.

Shit. He knew he shouldn’t have told him where he went.

“You still here?”

It is 1000% juvenile, he is fully aware of that, but Sara scrambles underneath the covers and he dives for the comforter on the floor to lay over her as so to make the lump of her body in the bed less prominent.

Of course, they don’t move fast enough.

She’s covered by the time Mick comes to the doorway, from the top of her head all the way down to her toes, but it is still painfully obvious that she is a person trying to hide and in response Mick raises his eyebrows and then walks away without a word.

Leonard hangs his head and starts to get up while Sara peeks out from under the covers.

“Roommate?” She asks while he searches for his clothes.

“Of sorts.” He grumbles, pulling his boxers on. “I’ll be right back.”

He pulls his shirt back on before leaving Sara alone in the bedroom, where she seems perfectly content he might add.

Mick is in the apartment’s small kitchen pouring himself a bowl of cereal and eyeing the milk jug suspiciously.

“Not like you to sleep with someone you want on a crew.” He observes, and then he apparently comes to the decision that the milk is alright because he starts to pour it into his bowl.

They didn’t have milk last night, so he had to have brought it with him.

“She isn’t going on any crew.”

Mick studies him for a moment, munching loudly on his cereal.

“You disappear for a week.” He finally says, “Then come back for another, then a girl shows up at the bar, starts one hell of a fight, and now she’s in your bed.”

“Yes, thank you for the recap.” He sneers, “Look, where I was last week doesn’t matter, I was doing recon for a job that didn’t pan out. As for the girl in there, she’s an old friend with violent tendencies. I brought her here so she wouldn’t be arrested after escalating _your_ fight.”

“She’s such an old friend,” Mick starts through a mouthful of cereal. “How come I’ve never heard of her?”

“Please,” Leonard says with a smooth roll of his eyes. “Like you needed the encouragement.”

Mick continues to look at him suspiciously, but Leonard holds his gaze. He doesn’t usually lie to Mick, not outright anyway, but he doesn’t want his old friend knowing he has his soulmate back.

Eventually Mick shrugs and returns his attention to his cereal.

“How long she sticking around?” He asks through a mouthful.

“Not long.” Len promises, “She’s heading out today.”

If ever asked, and he knows he will never be asked, he will deny the feeling of dying hope inside of him when he says that sentence. No. She’s leaving. They can’t be anything. Soulmates or not, they are BOTH too damaged to be anything more than destructive together.

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

* * *

 

Sara lays in Leonard’s bed after he’s gone out to talk with his friend and shut the door behind him, leaving her to her thoughts. She can’t believe she did this. Her mind plays back to last night and she would groan if she weren’t worried he or his friend might hear her. Instead she settles for wiping her hands down her face in disappointment with herself. Did she really do that? Did she really make things this much more complicated between her and him? It isn’t bad enough that they already have to deal with her being an undead assassin living on the brink of bloodthirsty insanity? She just had to go and add hooking up to the mix?

No.

She didn’t add hooking up to the mix because there isn’t any mix to add to. The universe may have paired them up together, but they don’t actually have any sort of relationship that hooking up could put in jeopardy. He saved her because Laurel went to him for help, and really, if some random person bails you out of jail what are you supposed to do? Not do what they ask in return? She could’ve had him back in jail as quickly as she had him out. His helping her was nothing more than a repayment.

That, Sara decides, is the story she is going to keep on telling herself. Last night was a one-time thing, brought about by boredom and maybe some minor physical attraction. Nothing more.

Nothing more.

 

* * *

 

Mick shrugs and finishes off his cereal. “Whatever.” He says through the last mouthful, “Just give me a warning next time you’re having company.”

Leonard rolls his eyes, and as Mick turns to dump his empty bowl in the sink, where it will likely stay until Leonard cleans it later, he turns to go back into his room.

When he opens the door he has every intention of telling Sara that it’s safe to come out and Mick isn’t going to think anything of her, so long as she doesn’t mention the whole soulmate thing. He expects to find her either still in his bed or getting dressed, maybe even dressed and waiting for him to come back.

But, instead, when he opens the door he finds the room is empty.

At first he is, understandably, confused. He looks around and almost gets down to check under the bed, but that’s when he notices the window, which he always keeps shut, is open.

He walks over and looks out but is met with nothing more that the sight of the city street with people going about their day below, nothing out of the ordinary and no undead blonde in sight.

He tries not to let it hurt him, she is hardly the first woman to leave his bedroom without so much as a goodbye, although those occurrences have typically been in the middle of the night while he’s pretending to be asleep.

It isn’t like he didn’t know she was going to leave, that had been the plan, but the fact that she’s snuck out the window while he was talking to Mick… It stings.

Oh well, maybe it’s better this way; if they’re nothing more to each other than a one night fling without a goodbye. They’re through with each other now; time to move on with his life.

His way of moving on with his life is, of course, throwing himself into his next job; planning and planning until he has every last detail worked out to the absolute millisecond.

And then, two months later when the night is upon them, Mick still trips the alarm.

He curses and runs for the door, shoving as much of the money they’ve come for as he can into the box he’s brought with him just before he goes.

“What have I told you about firing too close to heat sensors?” He snarls as Mick catches up to him, a pleased-with-himself grin stretched across his face.

“There was a guard.”

Leonard rolls his eyes, one idiot guard did not warrant the firing of his heat gun and blowing their cover, but alas, can’t change the past.

The alarm is still whirring when they get outside and to the get-a-away car.

“A minivan?” Mick demands, incredulous. “Really Snart?”

Now it’s Leonard’s turn to grin. In truth, the mini-van had been all he was able to get on short notice, not that it had to be short notice but he needed a job now before he lost his mind trying to keep from thinking about Sara, but Mick doesn’t need to know that.

“The cops will never hassle a dad buying diapers in the middle of the night.” He says with a sly smirk that for the record isn’t a total lie. He knows the cops will chase them, what with the way Mick drives, but the diaper box hiding the cash might actually work in keeping them off their backs after the pull over.

That is, so long as Mick doesn’t add running down a pedestrian to their list of crimes.

“Watch it!” He screams when a man appears in the road out of nowhere, and he’s pretty sure Mick slams on the breaks, and that must be what kills them because the next thing he knows everything has gone white.

 

* * *

 

When Sara wakes up she has a splitting headache, worse than any hangover she’s had in a long time.

She can tell from the sounds of traffic and the heavy smell of the air around her that she isn’t in Tibet anymore, and that alone is enough to raise her defenses.

The fact that sitting up shows her she is on a rooftop with a group of strangers doesn’t help anything.

“Where are we?” She asks, not that she is really expecting an answer.

“Why don’t you ask the dude who knocked us out and kidnapped us?” A guy, a kid really, says from further down the line of waking bodies. “British dud with a flashy thing? Ring any bells?”

Right. She remembers him.

The bar, the fight, and the Englishman who pointed something at her and she isn’t sure if she reacted.

“The name’s Rip Hunter.” It’s his voice; the man they’re talking about, that calls from only a few feet away and when she looks Sara can see him stepping forward. “I’m from East London. Oh, and the future.”

You know, there was probably a time in her life in which she would doubt someone telling her they’re from the future, but not anymore.

“Nice to meet you Rip.” A low, gravelly voice says somewhere behind her as she and the rest of the group start getting to their feet. Naturally she turns to look at where the voice has come from…

And it’s a burly man she’s seen once before, only two months ago, when he walked in on her and Leonard waking up in the morning.

And, of course, Leonard is standing next to him.

She gulps as they lock eyes; of course he’s been kidnapped too, it just figures.

It’s right then that this Rip, obviously taking no notice to the tension between two of his hostages, starts talking about a doomed future thanks to a man named Vandal Savage. Sara’s never heard the name but the woman and man next to her seem pretty unnerved by his mention. Apparently he is going to decimate the world in 150 years, and according to Rip they all go down in history as Legends, meaning they are the best candidates to stop him.

It all sounds too good and too impossible at the same time.

Rip leaves them with an index card that has nothing but an address and a time for tomorrow written on it. He hands it to this older man, who frankly looks like he should be grading college essays rather than setting out on a time machine to save the world, but who is she to judge? She peeks over his shoulder at the time and place on the card and then turns to look behind her.

But Leonard and his friend are already through the roof’s access door and leaving.


	12. Baking Soda and Vinegar

“I remember when you told mom and dad that you wanted to go to sleep away camp.” Laurel says as Sara ducks one of her punches. After realizing Rip had brought them to Star City she decided to take advantage and get her sister’s advice on his proposal, it’s basically her fault she’s in this mess after all.

“This’ll be a little different.”

“Time travel.” Laurel says, for maybe the third time since she came here.

They could stop their spar right here and now, but Sara isn’t done. She twirls her staff and breaks it into batons to show as much.

“I can’t believe we’re talking about it like it’s something real.”

“I know.” She says, then Laurel lunges for her.

They trade a few more blows in a matter of seconds until Sara gets a grip on Laurel’s wrist and with her other hand she stops her baton just short of bashing the nape of her sister’s neck.

“I think you should go.” Laurel huffs, and Sara drops the stance.

“Laurel.” She says, suddenly realizing that she had come here with the hopes her sister would talk her _out_ of going. “I died. I’m still picking up those pieces.”

They break off from each other and the platform in sync, heading down to one of the monitor desks where they’d left their water bottles.

“The Lazarus Pit brought me back but it left me with this need to take. To kill. I’m dangerous.”

Laurel sighs, ignoring her water for now.

“After you died, I needed a channel for my grief.” She says, in her patented older sister voice. “I found it in becoming the Black Canary. I found it in you.”

She looks to the floor, what is she supposed to do with that?

“There’s one more thing.” She finally huffs, looking up to see her sister’s imploring gaze. “Leonard’s been recruited to.”

Laurel’s lips part, just a bit, enough for Sara to know her mind is searching very carefully for the right thing to say.

“I ran into him, when I went to see mom in Central City.” She goes on, “I’m assuming you were hoping I would?”

Laurel, at least, has the decency to look guilty at that.

“I walked out on him.”

At that Laurel arches her eyebrow, and looks both confused and disappointed, like she doesn’t understand what she’s just been told but she does know she doesn’t like it.

“I couldn’t do it.” She goes on, “I’m too broken. I couldn’t invade his life with that.”

She doesn’t know what it is she’s hoping Laurel will say, and based on the way her sister is chewing on her lip she gathers that she doesn’t know what to say. But she’s thinking, and Sara will wait patiently until she’s done.

“You know things with Ollie and I have never been easy.” She finally comes out with. “And I had to bail Leonard out of prison to get him to help bring you back, I’m pretty sure he’s every bit as much damaged as you.”

She considers the notion, as well as remembers the scars and burns she saw on his skin. To say Leonard is damaged is probably an understatement, but to say he’s as damaged as she is…

“I should stay away from him.” She says, “If I go near him-”

“What?” Laurel asks softly, stepping forward into her space. “You afraid you’ll feel something for him?”

She snorts, if only her problems were that simple.

“Sara.” Laurel says firmly, “Honestly, you don’t really know him. So what do you have to lose?”

 

* * *

 

Leonard has to admit, despite heroics not being his thing; the idea of time travel is rather enticing. Still, Sara has also been recruited and it is for the best that he stay far away from her, however she will likely also be thinking on the lines of that note and he can’t say for certain that she’ll choose to stay thinking he will choose to go; or vice versa. So he’s toying with the idea of going, silently, and when Mick asks for a decision he shrugs.

“It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity.” He says, though really something like this is much rarer than that. It’s supposed to be a myth, time travel, so maybe this is once in three lifetimes. “We could steal the Mona Lisa right off Da Vinci’s easel, snatch the Hope diamond before it was discovered. It’s everything we got into thieving for, and more.”

Yes, it truly is a once in every three lifetimes opportunity.

Mick raises his eyebrows, and his beer.

“What about your friend who’s prone to danger?”

His eyes flick up. He’s still sitting on the sofa, looking up at his partner through his lashes.

“What about her?”

“She was there.” Mick reminds him, “She gonna get in our way?”

It happens involuntarily, which with Leonard is a rarity, and he knows Mick catches it because they’ve known each other forever, so he curses himself for it, but his face steels. His fists clench and his teeth grit, so right now Mick, if he didn’t already suspect there might be something about Sara Leonard isn’t telling him, knows as much now.

Fine, whatever, he can deal with that later.

“No.” He promises coolly, “She won’t.”

 

* * *

 

Sara hasn’t been indecisive in a very, very long time.

There hasn’t been time for it, in her experience. If you take even a fraction of a second too long to make a choice then you’re dead, end of story. On the Amazo, in The League, on the streets, everywhere she’s been in the last nine years. Indecisiveness kills.

If she were in any of those places right now, she’d be dead twelve times over.

“Oh my god I don’t even care anymore!” Laurel groans from the kitchen as Sara steps away from the front door of the apartment yet again. “Go or don’t, but make up your mind.”

“I still think you should go.” Thea offers from where she’s seated at the counter with a banana.

“And what if Leonard goes?” She asks, although Thea doesn’t appear bothered by the possibility.

“If it’s meant to be-”

Sara groans again, this isn’t helping.

“He’s your soulmate.” Thea so helpfully reminds her. “And, for what it’s worth, he’s pretty cute.”

Sara only rolls her eyes and she catches Laurel just barely stopping herself from spitting out her water.

“What? He is.” Thea defends herself. “And he offered to kill Malcolm for me.”

Of course he did.

“All Thea is trying to say,” Laurel finally interjects, “Is that you shouldn’t base this decision on what Leonard may or may not decide. You should go if you think that’s what’s going to be best for you, and if he’s there then you can cross that bridge when you get to it.”

Sara nods and takes a breath.

“Ok.” She says. Ok, that sounds like a plan. She can do that.

* * *

 

She should never have listened to Laurel.

When she gets to the lot most of the other recruits are starting to congregate by the entrance gate, including Leonard.

He glances over at her, a hard look that she thinks might actually be a warning of not to talk to him.

Fair enough, she hadn’t expected him to be happy to see her.

She gulps and looks away, and just like that they have an understanding. They’re both here, for better or for worse, and they’re going to stay out of each other’s way.

Or, maybe not.

Professor Stein drives up with the kid who had been talking to her last night unconscious in his passenger seat, and then Rip comes out of seemingly nowhere and reveals The Waverider, his time traveling spaceship.

Everyone files onto the ship, Leonard’s friend giving Stein a hand with the kid, and as she’s making her way on board alone and at the back of the pack Leonard sidles up next to her.

“Well, looks like we’re going to be spending a lot of time together.”

She snorts and keeps her eyes ahead, trying not to let that drawl of his voice get in her head.

“Looks like.” She says, “Sorry about leaving out your window.”

“Please, you did us both a favor.”

Ok, at least she knows he isn’t angry about it, in fact he almost sounds relieved.

“I just wanted to ask you…” He goes on, a bit awkwardly. “Look, can we just…keep the whole soulmate thing to ourselves?”

She stops in her tracks; she had never even considered that they would tell anyone here about their marks. But he looks genuinely worried about it.

“Of course.” She answers, sincerely, and his expression is much the same as he nods, awkward and sincere.

He walks on ahead of her then, entering the bridge of The Waverider with her a few paces behind him. Everyone else is marveling at the machinery and general futuristic-ness of the ship, and while she will admit she’s fascinated by it her mind is still a little focused on him, and the thought that maybe them being here together isn’t such a good idea after all.

She’s half listening as Rip explains that they aren’t going to just storm Savage at the height of his power, a smart precaution, and instead are going to St. Roch 1975 to pay a visit to a man who may well be the only person in history to have extensive knowledge of their warlord.

“I suggest you all strap yourselves in.” He announces, moving for the chair at the head of the circle of others. “Temporal navigation isn’t something one wants to be standing up for.”

Right, of course.

They all move for the seats closest to them, and for her that is the set furthest away from Leonard.

“Mind if I sit?” The only other woman here asks her, already standing in front of the seat next to her.

“All you.” She answers, nodding her head and the woman grins in thanks. “I’m Sara, by the way.”

“Kendra.”

She doesn’t ask Kendra why she isn’t sitting with the guy she was obviously with last night and even more obviously came with this morning, but she does note that guy is sitting next to Ray Palmer in the set of seats next to Leonard and his friend, so as far away as Kendra could physically get from him.

She also remembers Leonard had pointed out that she didn’t look too thrilled to be here, and she didn’t deny it.

Maybe, hopefully, she isn’t the only one on this ship with soulmate issues.

 

* * *

 

As the ship rocks with take off Leonard can’t help but to spare a glance over at Sara, who quickly adverts her eyes in favor of focusing on the back of Hunter’s head. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

The kid’s waking up and promptly chewing out Stein distracts him from dwelling on that thought much further.

“Good luck explaining this.” Sara teases the professor, and it’s maybe the first time he’s ever heard her joke; it’s a nice sound.

“I did him a favor!” Stein defends, self-righteous as ever.

“He doesn’t look all that grateful.” Leonard says through his desire to laugh. He can’t help himself, especially not once he notices Sara snickering at his comment.

Stein looks like he is about to retort, but the ship gives a rough jolt and it cuts him off.

It feels like they’re on the world’s most unstable rollercoaster. Leonard has to close is eyes and grit his teeth, his hands holding tight to his restraints until his knuckles are stark white and then, gradually, it all winds down and he can open his eyes again just in time to see Mick lean over the edge of his seat and vomit.

“I should’ve mentioned before,” Rip says, not quite sympathetically, “Nausea is one of the side effects of time travel. Along with-”

The guy who had been wearing a robot suit last night face plants into the floor.

“Vertigo.”

“I can’t see.” The Professor announces, taking off his glasses before the restraints.

“And temporary blindness.”

Well, isn’t this just lovely.

His own vision is swimming a bit, but it’s already clearing and not so bad he can’t focus through it. He looks over at Sara, and she seems fine, blinking her wide eyes and her head a little wobbly on her neck, but fine nonetheless.

As they all shake off the side effects Rip makes the announcement that himself, Mick, and of course, Sara, will be staying on the ship while the others are all out looking for this Professor Boardman.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Mick protests, still a little groggy from the nausea, but better him than Leonard. “You’re benching us?”

“I thought we were a team.” Sara quickly joins the argument, and suddenly Leonard has the urge to put his head between his knees like an ostrich in the sand.

This isn’t going to end well for him.

They’re going to lose this protest, especially since Mick is already curious about Sara and now that she’s spoken up his protests will almost definitely be all half hearted going forward, as he’s been reminded that she is also being benched.

“This mission doesn’t require your particular skill set.” Rip coolly explains. “Yet.”

“Meaning you don’t need anyone killed, maimed or robbed.” He adds in, no point in fighting it right now.

“Precisely.”

Peachy.

The kid, Jax, ends up staying behind as well, so at least there’s that. Mick finds a TV remote and manages to get the monitor to pick up a signal, and then he starts complaining about the TV only playing reruns.

Sara looks at him with disbelief, and he just sighs in disappointment. Mick’s a smart guy, when he wants to be, but he really couldn’t tell if that was a joke or not.

Sara sighs, groans really, and then her hands clasp together and her eyes light up in a dangerous sort of way that he really wishes he didn’t find so attractive.

This is going to be a long mission.

“Am I the only one on this ship who could really use a drink?”

That… is either a terrible idea, or an excellent one.

Mick’s looking over at him, a certain gleam in his eyes and you know what? Maybe getting off the ship could be could for all three of them.

“Excellent idea.” He decides, cautiously, especially once he sees that little grin on Sara’s face.

“I got the perfect outfit.” She says and then walks away, presumably to go change.

Maybe it is a terrible idea.


	13. What We Are

This, so far, is turning out to be a ticking time bomb of a bad idea.

The three of them have been off the ship for exactly two minutes and so far none of them have said a word.

Sara, now dressed from head to toe in a white leather suit, is keeping her eyes focused very keenly on the buildings they walk past, or the skyline, basically anything but him. As for Mick… Mick hasn’t said a word. He has been almost concernedly quiet ever since they stepped off the ship, or really, ever since he turned off the TV and they started heading out. He didn’t even ask about Sara while they were waiting for her to change.

That should be a Godsend, but so far it’s only serving to drive Leonard further towards the brink of madness.

Somehow he hasn’t spontaneously combusted by the time they get to the bar, and a sign for dollar beers is enough to draw Mick’s attention. Still, he’s wordless as he goes over to the bar and then promptly returns with three beers, and then takes a seat at a table in the far corner of the room.

“What’s with your friend?” Sara asks, nodding towards Mick.

“Not sure.” Len answers suspiciously, “Thought he would’ve been all over me for answers about you.”

“You didn’t tell him?”

“I asked you to keep it between us, didn’t I?”

Something flickers through her blues eyes with that, a partial realization. She had clearly assumed that he explained the whole thing to Mick after she left two months ago; she never considered Mick might be the reason he wants to keep what they are to each other a secret.

Whatever that is.

“So…” He drawls, wracking his brain for a change in topic and not quite finding one, but what he can think of is close enough. “Where did you go after jumping out my window?”

“Fire escape.” She answers cheekily, and then takes a sip of her beer. “I traveled. I got on a plane to Russia, then China. I went and saw Nyssa.”

He’ll be honest; he hadn’t actually thought she would do that, at least not so soon. Still, he’s glad she did it before this mission came up.

“And are you two...?” He trails off, and as he sips his beer she smirks at him.

“We’re done.” She answers, “Things are complicated right now, for both of us. We were always good together but… not that good.”

There’s a twinge of regret in her words, enough that he almost feels sorry for her.

It’s in that moment that his ears pick up a change in the song on the jukebox, somebody has so fittingly selected Captain and Tennille’s _Love Will Keep Us Together._

Sara hears the song too, and she smirks, no sadness in her expression, but mischief instead.

“You want to dance, Leonard?” She asks, and oh is he tempted to say yes, and he’s sure there is probably a set of circumstances out there that could convince him, but broad daylight in a semi-crowded bar with no real dance floor is not one of them.

“You go right ahead.” He almost challenges her, “I’ll watch.”

The grin she gives him this time is every bit as mischievous as the last one, and somehow that only makes her that much more intriguing.

“Suit yourself.” She says, plopping her beer in his hand, and as she pulls her hand away her mark moves right past his line of sight.

He wonders if she did that on purpose.

He sips his beer as he watches her, a glance over to Mick in the corner who doesn’t even look up.

This is so not what he expected from this.

 

* * *

 

What is she doing?

Honestly, asking him to dance? What the hell is she thinking?

That he’s her soulmate? So what? He doesn’t want a relationship or anything from her, thankfully. He’s like her; damaged. He knows as well as she does that _they_ would be a terrible idea. She suggested this drink to get them all off edge, to put _something_ in their strange relationship that wouldn’t be tainted with resurrection or bloodlust. A simple drink, something normal.

So why the hell is she flirting with him?

She doesn’t have very long to kick herself for it. She has only started to dance along to the music when an oversized man grabs hold of her wrist.

Well, there goes normal.

In the ensuing fight she take down him and several of his friends, but eventually she’s overwhelmed and calls to Leonard for back up. He smashes both their drinks as a means of making his entrance and them him and his buddy are on the floor and taking out goons alongside her.

This isn’t the first fight she’s had since coming back where the bloodlust chooses to stay where it belongs under her surface, thankfully, but this is the first in which she has felt like this.

This is the first time since coming back, maybe even since before dying, in which she’s really felt like herself.

It’s insane, really, that the first time in her life in which she feels like herself she’s in the center of a bar fight, but she wouldn’t expect anything less from herself.

The fight is over fairly quickly, mostly due to the three of them knocking out every patron who dares join in, but also in part to the bartender kicking them out.

“Well,” Leonard remarks as they stagger out of the bar and dust themselves off. “That was fun.”

She smirks, and his friend, Mick apparently, grunts.

“What’s next?” He asks and Sara thinks for a moment, looking over her shoulder to Mick who so far has been quiet.

“We should probably head back to the ship, before Rip realizes we’re gone.”

Leonard hums, a sound of agreement, but then he starts walking the opposite of the way they came.

She follows him anyway, so does Mick, and soon the find themselves in the bar’s parking lot.

“Then we better get moving.” He says by way of explanation, walking over to the nearest car and pulling open the door, grinning a little when there is no lock to give him trouble.

Sara has to smile when he bends into the drivers seat and starts hotwiring until the car gives a hum. Apparently her type has always been right on par with apparent destiny.

* * *

 

Mick knows something’s up with Snart and this Sara chick; he’s not blind. He saw Leonard walking right along side her onto the ship, and then separating as far as he could from her. Other than that there’s really nothing strange about her aside from he doesn’t know who she is, and never before has a girl snuck out Leonard’s window who his best friend wasn’t willing to share the details of, not to his knowledge anyway. He wants to ask what the story is, but from the moment they landed in 1975 he’s been distracted.

After twenty-five years, that damn mark of his has quit aching.

He gets why; he was born in 1970, it would make sense his soulmate is alive in 1975. But he’s lived with that ache for so long… he’d forgotten what it was like to live without it.

He pretty much goes through the motions of the day, his mind immovably stuck on the prospect of his soulmate. When Sara suggests they all go get a drink he goes, tries to drown the non-empty feeling away, and when that doesn’t work he is more than happy to join in the fight she’s started; at least this one was at the expense of a perv.

He doesn’t shove himself into the driver’s seat of the car Snart hotwires, instead he goes for the passenger seat and he couldn’t miss Snart’s concerned glance at him if he tried, oh and he did try.

The fight they find at The Waverider helps a little, but ultimately they just barely make it away with their lives, especially the expert on Savage they’d come here for. Once the truth comes out that this whole mission is based on a lie, The Englishman isn’t a time master, he’s actually wanted by them, and they’re all nothing more than forgotten parts of history, well as least he’s no longer the most bummed out of the group.

They all file off the bridge, off to think over what they want their next move to be at the Professor’s suggestion, and that’s when Snart corners him.

“What’s with you today?” He tries to sound casual about it, to anyone else he would, but Mick knows him too well.

He stays silent for a moment, and as he does he comes to the realization that his dull pain has returned now that they’re in the temporal zone, and he sighs.

“When we landed in 1975,” He says, “My uh… My mark stopped aching.”

Snart blinks, caught off guard, a rare sight. Any other circumstances, or even same circumstances on someone else, he might enjoy it.

“You’re soulmate?”

“Yeah.” Mick huffs, regretting this already. They don’t do feelings, but soulmates are something they’ve always been honest about. He told Snart about it when he’d first started feeling the aches of emptiness, and Snart told him when he started feeling it a year ago.

There’s some strange kind of look in Snart’s eyes, but it’s gone quick enough, when a crash sounds out from somewhere down the hall.

They go check it out, to make sure no one’s dead, and when they get to the source they’re standing in the entrance of a cargo hold with Haircut staring wide-eyed at a smoldering pile of melted something and Sara sitting on a nearby crate, unamused.

“Sorry.” Haircut apologies’, “Tinkering helps me think.”

He rolls his eyes, and then follows Snart deeper into the hold. They each claim a crate of their own to sit on.

“So…” Snart drawls, “You two reach a verdict yet?”

Sara shrugs, looks over at Ray, and then back to them.

“Not sure.” She says, “You?”

Mick, avoiding his partner’s eyes, is well aware of the curious gaze set on him.

“Not sure.” Leonard echoes, and then it’s quiet again.

Mick wants to scoff; he would if it wouldn’t draw attention. It isn’t like this changes anything. So they might run through a few years where his soulmate’s still alive and that little blob at the base of his throat will stop hurting for awhile, doesn’t change she’s still gonna die when she does. (He’s pretty sure his soulmate’s a she, he’s never been as open to “options” as Leonard.)

She probably lived a nice, happy little life, one that likely would’ve been worse if he had been a part of it. He isn’t going to go tracking her down through history.

But, he wouldn’t mind living without that damned ache for a few hours every couple of days.

That’s about when another blast comes from Haircut’s tinkering and almost blasts his foot off.

“Watch it!” He shouts, nearly jumping off his crate.

“Sorry.” Haircut says, and it’s only now that he’s out of his musings that Mick realizes how tense the room actually is.

And apparently, tense and quiet don’t go well together for Haircut.

“What’s the point in even giving this a second thought?” He asks, “Rip has already seen the future. He knows exactly what’s in store for each of us. Might as well have stayed dead, cause the world doesn’t need any of us.”

He turns his attention to Sara then, tells her she’s never gonna be anything more than a lost assassin, and then him and Snart, they’re just good-for-nothing criminals.

“I can live with that.” Mick says, and he can, but he knows damn well that Snart can’t. He’s not the kind of man who takes kindly to being told what he can and can’t do, especially if the person telling him is a compulsive liar from the future.

Haircut, apparently, doesn’t take too kindly to it either. He complains about his life’s work ending up as nothing significant and that’s apparently when Sara’s had enough and decides to call bullshit.

“That’s not what he said.” She says as she gets up. “Rip said that in _his_ future we’re nobodies. But this mission is about changing the future. I mean, if we have the power to change the world, don’t you think we have the power to change our own fate?”

“For better,” Snart drawls with a huff. “Or for worse.”

 

* * *

 

For better or for worse indeed.

For Sara, staying on the ship after Rip’s lie is found out is never a question. He didn’t lie about the mission, or Savage’s future, and those were the only parts she ever cared about.

Still, serving under the command of a Captain clearly willing to lie to his crew, she knows she’s going to have to be careful.

She’ll admit that a part of her is happy when Leonard decides to stay as well; no matter how complicated she’s sure that’ll make things.

And, with how things are going, they are bound to get complicated.

Now armed with Professor Boardman’s notebook, and the small knowledge Gideon has on Savage in this era, they find themselves at an arms deal which heads very far south, very quickly.

She makes a note that she’s going to have to be aware of Stein shooting his mouth off in the future, and that Leonard doesn’t appear surprised in the least.

On the plus side, they can’t possibly get any worse than exposing their identities and nearly causing a nuclear explosion, right?  
Or, maybe not.

Turns out a piece of Ray’s suit got left behind at the arms deal and picked up by Savage, and as of now 2016 as they know it is on track to become hardly more than a crumbled wasteland controlled by Savage.

Go team.

“There must be a way to correct this somehow.” Stein says, and Sara doesn’t miss the way Leonard glares up at him, likely biting back a comment about having done enough for one day.

But, Rip nods.

“Fortunately Gideon is just showing us a forecast of the future you’ve all created.” Well, he’s clearly not the type to sugarcoat. “Time is like cement, it takes time to become permanent. In this case, until Savage’s team has worked out the mystery of your future technology and molded it to their own ends.”

He pauses there, hands resting heavy on the table.

“When they do what you see here is no longer just a forecast. This is history.”

Right, and their job is to change history, or in this case, change it back.

It takes two teams, and they manage to save 2016, but not without paying a steep price.

Carter.

Kendra, understandably, doesn’t take it very well and not to mention she gets pretty beat up in the fight. So she’s in the ships med bay, sedated and recovering, and while Rip is out with Stein tying up one last loose end Sara pulls up a chair and sits with the team’s other woman.

She could hear her screams all the way down the hall earlier, screams for Carter.

“How’s she doing?” Sara turns her attention at the sound of Leonard’s voice; he’s leaned himself in the doorway with his arms folded across his middle and he’s studying them both intently.

“Asleep.” She answers, “Rip said they had to put her under because she was hysterical and could’ve hurt herself more.”

He nods and strolls into the room, his eyes set on Kendra almost… sympathetically.

A shiver runs down her spine as she thinks on that. Laurel’s explained to her that he was there on the night she died, that she crashed through his windshield. She never asked how he took it. She’d doubted there were tears, or really any sort of mourning. He didn’t know her. But now, seeing the way he’s looking at Kendra, maybe…

“This isn’t going to work.”

She looks up; his eyes are now very serious and set on her.

“What?”  
He glances back to Kendra, sad and observant all at once.

“I think we figured out today that we aren’t very good at ignoring each other.”

True, she’ll give him that. Between the bar and the blatant flirting that neither of them could seem to help, they’re hardly going to be able to keep up the charade of being strangers.

“But I still don’t want the others knowing what we are to each other, not right away anyway.”

She looks up at him through her lashes, her hands folded together on the armrest of Kendra’s chair.

“And what exactly are we to each other?”

If it’s possible to drawl out an innuendo without actually opening one’s mouth that is exactly what Leonard is doing. His eyes say it all, about how his mind is thinking back to the one night they spent together and he’s trying to think of just the right way to bring it up.

“After you left that morning in Central City I told Mick you were an old friend.” It’s almost a question, an inquiry as to whether or not that cover story is acceptable to her.

“What kind of friend?” She almost teases, and his body goes completely still, a little smirk on his lips to match her raised eyebrows.

“Didn’t specify.” He answers, “But…” He takes a strolling step closer to her. “He did walk in on us in bed together.”

Now it’s her turn to smirk, and when she stands up she finds they’re so close he needs to take a step back so that she has room, to which she frowns.

“We don’t have to be soulmates to be sleeping together.” She muses, “And when living in such close quarters…”

“It won’t be the hardest sell.” He finishes for her, and granted this probably isn’t healthy for either of them. Sara knows enough about feelings to know when she is using sex to avoid her own, and she suspects that he does too. But with the way this mission is panning out so far, she’s sure it’s a safe bet to say there will be plenty of times to hash out feelings when they’re ready.


	14. Shifting

They don’t sleep together that night, if only because they only get a few hours to rest while Rip comes up with the next plan and it quickly becomes apparent that they’ve all been awake for nearly forty-six hours straight. All this time travel is really going to take some getting used to.

After the plan is both made and horribly executed, Sara doesn’t feel like doing anything other than sleeping.

The bloodlust took over not once, but twice today. Once during a trip to a bank to try and figure out what Savage is doing in 1975, and a second time during Savage’s cult meeting. She killed at least one person at the bank, maybe two, she doesn’t really remember but when she came out of it the bloodlust had felt slightly abated, and Rip had had a few choice words for her.

She goes straight to her room after the double funeral for Carter and Aldus, she wants nothing more than to lie down and sleep away the simmering murder underneath her skin. She’s lived in a haze a lot since coming back and right now is no exception. It isn’t the red, angry haze that comes with the bloodlust taking over, but a slow, numb haze that comes with facing what she’s done without the bloodlust being totally fulfilled.

If it ever can be totally fulfilled.

She moves slowly around her room as she changes into sweats, kicks off her shoes, and crawls on top of her blankets and curls in on herself with her back to the door.

She lets out a deep breath and the fingers of one hand find their way to the edge of her lips. She does her best to clear her mind, to forget about the bloodlust. She doesn’t remember closing her eyes, but they have to open when she hears a knock at her door.

She groans lowly as she rolls herself off the bed and over to the door, pressing her hand to the panel to open it and not all that surprised when she sees Leonard standing on the other side.  
“Len,” she practically whines, “I’m not in-”

“I know.”

He doesn’t usually cut her off; it isn’t his style. Oh he always thinks he knows best, but with her… Maybe it’s what he’s seen or who she’s supposed to be, _what_ they’re supposed to be, but in the handful of days she’s ever spent with him they’ve developed a respect for each other. They trust each other, and whether they always understand it or not they get each other.

So she should’ve seen the pain on his face from the start.

She steps aside and lets him in, scanning the door shut behind him. He stands awkwardly in her room; second-guessing his coming here she’s willing to bet.

“So…” She drawls, scuffing her foot awkwardly against the floor and crossing her arms over herself. “What happened to you today?”

He hesitates, but she’ll wait. He unbuckles his gun holster and sets it on her desk, thinking all the while, until he’s looking at her again.

“I tried to stop my dad from going to prison.”

She nods, and keeps her face carefully neutral. It’s the first glimpse into his past that she’s been given, the first thing she’s learned about him that hasn’t come from an immediately pressing circumstance.

“You?”

She sighs, and looks away from him for a second, but then meets his eyes again.

“I killed people.” She confesses, quietly, but loud enough that he hears. “I think two.”

He nods, and the next thing she knows she’s crossing the room again, but not for him.

They move in sync, him unlacing and then toeing off his boots while she climbs onto her mattress and waits until he’s done. He notices, and he knows it’s permission, so once his shoes are off he hefts himself up with her and they settle down with him lying on his back and holding one arm around her to keep her close to his chest. He’s warm and solid underneath her, so much better than tuning out the world alone.

It’s some time later that Sara begins to stir on his chest, woken by a low beeping and Gideon’s voice telling them that they need to get to the bridge for a jump. She blinks the sleep from her eyes, her visions bleary and her mouth dry. Raising her head to look up at Leonard he looks confused, like he hadn’t even realized they’d been sleeping. He grunts as he looks down at her, and they take their time peeling away from each other and getting ready for the jump, weather that means simply putting shoes and a gun holster back on, or changing into more mission ready clothes.

Not her suit, that’s a bit overkill, but it’s probably a good idea to put on a bra.

They’re the last to the bridge, by only a little, not enough of a lag between them and Stein that it should draw any undue attention, but Sara doesn’t miss the curious glance Mick sends their way.

“Where are we going?” Ray asks as they all strap in.

“Gideon has detected a 98% likelihood that Vandal Savage will reappear in 1986.” Rip answers.

“The 80’s.” Ray accepts, “Better break out your parachute pants.”

“What the hell are parachute pants?” Jax asks, and Sara doesn’t miss Len snickering just the tiniest bit next to her.

 

* * *

 

The mission in the 80’s leads to them breaking into The Pentagon to find information on Savage’s exact location, and Leonard will admit it’s kind of fun, at least until it all goes south.

Turns out Sara isn’t the only Legend suffering from a sort of bloodlust.

In simple terms, Kendra “hawks out” and nearly kills a man, and from what he hears the incident looked strikingly similar to Sara losing control.

Must be why Rip has decided to have her train the demigoddess.

“What makes him think I can talk Kendra into controlling Chayara, or whatever the hell her crazy hawk side is called?” She asks, exasperated, and he glances up from his cufflinks when she speaks.

“At least you don’t have to go with Raymond to the Russian ballet.” He says, and she groans.

“I’d rather be doing that than talking feelings with Big Bird.”

He hums, and grabs his coat from the foot of his bed.

“Just don’t destroy the Waverider while I’m gone.”

She gives him just the faintest smile at that, hardly amused, but he’ll take it.

“No promises.”

He snickers, but before he can even think about that tiny little smile of hers, or the fact that he’d just let her follow him into his room as he’d gotten dressed, or anything else along the lines of her, the ship gives a violent rattle.

They both stagger on their feet, holding out instinctively to grab on to the nearest thing, it just so happens that for her the nearest thing is him.

They look to each other, half worried and half annoyed, and then do their best to hurry to the bridge without being knocked over.

Which is surprisingly easy, considering the ship starts slowing until it’s almost still.

“We run out of gas or something?” He questions as the bridge doors open.

Hunter’s standing around the console with the kid and the Professor, Raymond coming in from the door on the other side, but it’s Gideon who answers him.

“Chronos is still in pursuit.” She says, and Leonard’s mind flashes back to the fight in 1975 with the Boba Fett cosplayer.

Great.

“Weapon’s systems tracking.” The AI concludes, not that Jax appears very reassured, and so Len won’t either.

“Look,” the kid exclaims, turning to Hunter. “If this is your idea of trying to lose him, then-”

“Ah-ha.” The Captain interrupts just as another blinking light appears on the monitor. “The Soviet Air force to the rescue. Now let’s see how badly Chronos wants to follow us.”

In theory, that isn’t a horrible idea. Except for Chronos is cloaked, they no longer are, and getting the missiles that the Soviet’s shoot at them to hit Chronos instead means they have to cut their engines and free fall into a landing.

Why did he agree to come on this mission again?

“I have good news Captain.” Gideon chimes after the ship has taken out roughly thirty trees and created a rather large ditch in plowing into the ground. “Despite our harsh landing, the ship is still fully operational.”

Her words are punctuated by a rather large burst of sparks coming from the overhead light.

“If it were up to me,” How is Stein already lecturing after that landing? “They would revoke your pilot’s license.”

“They are more than welcome to,” Rip returns, and then, quietly mutters, “Considering I don’t have one.”

Seriously, WHY did Leonard agree to this mission?

 

* * *

 

Mick’s starting to wonder why he ever agreed to come on this stupid mission.

 So far it’s been kind of a snooze fest more often than it isn’t, not to mention he hasn’t gotten to use his gun nearly as many times as he would’ve liked by now.

Oh, and Hunter’s an idiot, just putting that out there.

With Snart and Haircut gone to the ballet he’d gone with their Captain, promised he could use his gun and then later denied, to check out a sighting of Chronos in the woods. Except it isn’t Chronos when they get there, it’s the leader of the time pigs, offering Hunter a bargain. Turn himself in and all will be forgotten, the team returned home like none of this ever happened.

Mick knows a trap set by pigs when he sees one.

He tells Hunter he isn’t going to that rendezvous, but the Captain still wants to talk to the others about it and right now he’s in his little office with both halves of the burning man.

Whatever, not his problem.

He’s in the kitchen, galley, whatever it’s called, when Blondie comes running through looking like she’s seen a ghost.

“Hey,” he calls after her, but she doesn’t stop. She looks over her shoulder, see’s it’s him, and then keeps running.

Whatever.

He keeps picking at the stupid sugar-free bag of cookies for a few more minutes until bird girl comes walking in with one hand rubbing at her shoulder.

“Pull something?” He asks as she opens the freezer and pull out an ice pack.

“I wish.” She says, wrapping the ice pack in a paper towel and shuttering with the cold of it as she presses it to the crook of her neck. “Sara was teaching me to control my inner-hawk, which took over but soon as I knocked her down I came back, the next thing I knew it was like something had taken over Sara and she was trying to kill me.”

Mick hums, “Yeah.” He says, crumpling his now empty cookie packet. “I’ve seen that.”

Bird girl’s eyebrows scrunch up together, “What?”

“Yeah,” he huffs, “Guess Boss and Blondie are old friends, not sure from when. They met up a couple months back, bar fight broke out… not sure whose fault, but one minute Blondie’s sitting there looking pretty, the next half the guys were dead and she was at the center.”

That day still makes him wonder, a lot. He still doesn’t know where Snart found Blondie, or when, and even though Snart’s said it was nothing he’s still convinced she has something to do with that week he was off the grid. Not that he hasn’t disappeared before, but he usually gives a heads up, and Blondie showing up the next week…

It just doesn’t sit right with him.

Then again, neither do the damn sugar free cookies.

Turns out he’s got bigger problems anyway. Hunter calls him not long after Kendra’s left the galley; to go set a trap for the time pig trying to trap them.

Finally, a chance to use his gun.

 

* * *

 

Leonard knows he should be suspicious when he and Raymond get back and there is no Captain to report to. The whole ship is eerily quiet, though Leonard doesn’t get the feeling he and Raymond are totally alone, even if they don’t come across a single soul from the entry ramp to the bridge.

“Where do you think they are?” Raymond asks, undoing his tie, and Len has a biting remark on the very tip of his tongue but the door swishes open and it dies there; as Mick and Stein come in helping Jax limp along with a rather bright patch of red growing on the fabric of his t-shirt.

“Ah gentlemen,” Hunter exclaims, slipping in just ahead of the injured party. “I trust everything went according to plan at the Bolshoi?”

“Uh… Yeah.” Raymond stutters; his eyes still locked on Jax. “We made contact with Vostok and swiped her badge.”

“What happened to him?” Leonard asks, if no one else is going to do it.

“Chronos.”

Ah, right, that lunatic.

The next few minutes are, well, they aren’t pretty. Jax and The Professor obviously have a lot of issues they need to work out, hopefully _after_ the former has is bullet hole sewn up.

Len decides to give Mick a hand in getting the kid to the med bay, telling him to take it easy and half listening as he continues to gripe about having Stein in his head all the time.

Personally, Leonard has no idea how he deals with that.

Once they get Jax settled and sedated so Gideon can do her thing he looks up at Mick.

“What I miss?”

His partner shrugs, “Time pigs found us, offered Hunter a plea deal, sorta. Didn’t go well.”

Yeah, he can see that.

“Chronos?”

“Got away.”

Peachy.

“Where are the ladies?”

Another shrug.

“Saw Kendra before we left, Blondie snapped and almost killed her during training.”

He feels his eyes go wide.

He leaves the room with that, without saying another word, and he’s sure Mick is wondering about it but he can deal with it later, right now he’s a little more preoccupied with Sara.

Unfortunately, he finds Kendra first; or rather, she finds him.

She steps right in front of him, comes out from behind a corner so suddenly a lesser man might jump. Her arms are folded and her eyes are serious.

“What’s Sara’s deal?”

“Nice to see you too.”

“Snart.”

He rolls his eyes, “What makes you think I would know anything about whatever’s going on with Sara?”

“Mick says you’re old friends.”

Of course he did.

Len steels his cold mask into place pushes past her.

“It’s not my place.”

“What do you mean?” Kendra splutters, following him. “She almost killed me!”

“Should’ve fought harder.”

“Snart!”

He sighs, stops, and turns back to her.

“It’s a side effect of the pit, the thing that brought her back to life. She calls it a bloodlust, it makes her want to kill, are we done here?”

She doesn’t answer, she only blinks at him, and that’s an answer enough. So he leaves her there and continues on his way to Sara’s room. Once he’s there he knocks, once and then twice, but he doesn’t receive an answer.

“Sara?” He calls, “Sara it’s me.”

“Pardon me Mr. Snart.” Gideon’s voice rings out from above. “But I feel I should inform you that Ms. Lance is not in her bedroom.”

Yeah, that might be good information to have.

“Where is she Gideon?”

“In the cargo hold. Ms. Saunders is on her way there now.”

Hm, well that was quick.

He almost goes down there, gets halfway there even, but ultimately he decides against it.

They can’t keep relying on each other, that’s not what people who are strictly sleeping together do, so he turns around and heads for the bridge instead to see where progress is on Vostok.


	15. Third Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beware, this chapter is a long one!

Somehow, it doesn’t surprise Mick that he’s ended up in prison.

Well, prison is a broad term; to be specific he and Haircut have ended up in a Russian Gulag after the plan to sneak into the Soviet Lab went to hell.

“This is your fault.” He grumbles to Haircut as the two of them are herded through processing like cattle.

“My fault?” Haircut asks, “How is it my fault?”

Mick snorts, how can someone whose supposed to be so smart be such a moron?

“Didn’t hear you putting up a fight when the guards knocked you out.”

Ray, at least, doesn’t have an answer for that. Mick’s still not entirely clear on _what_ happened in that lab; all he knows is The Professor went in, Snart and Haircut followed, then he got sent in to take on the fight. Now he and Haircut are here, and he has no idea where Savage’s lady friend brought The Professor.

Least Snart got out.

“Ok, fair point.” Haircut says, and that’s about when Mick notices the idiot’s been smiling at every inmate they pass.

“What the hell are you doing?” He growls lowly.

“Just trying to be friendly.”

It takes everything in him not to put his face in his hands with disappointment. He’s going to die here, and it’s going to be this idiot’s fault.

He tries to tell Haircut to keep to himself once yard time comes around, but surprise, surprise the guy isn’t really big on listening.

Whatever.

He keeps going on about saving The Professor, even though they’re the ones who need saving. Ok yeah, Professor does too, but there isn’t anything they can do to help him. Besides, there’s no way Hunter’s really going to throw in the towel and just let Savage have the guy who invented a living weapon, he’s too obsessed to let something like that go. Hopefully he and Haircut will get rescued in the process.

That is, if they live that long.

Haircut starts poking his nose where it doesn’t belong almost soon as yard time’s started, trying to find where they might be holding The Professor, and big shock, he gets the ever living shit beat out of him for it.

Mick does, for the record, think about stepping in. But the guy’s gotta learn, and he hasn’t been too responsive to verbal warnings, so instead he grabs a lighter from another inmate to distract any temptation, and keeps on looking into the flame long after the guards have broken up the fight and dragged Haircut’s unconscious ass off.

Maybe now he’ll listen.

He’s gone for most of the day, but not long enough that Mick’s worrying he got thrown in solitary or anything. It’s dark when the guards finally bring him back, his steps staggering and his face caked with dry blood.

Mick almost feels bad for him.

“Hey, Pyro.” He demands with more bite than Mick thought he had in him. “What was that there back in the yard?”

“Just your typical prison alpha,” he answers, “He didn’t like you threatening his reputation.”

“Not that.” Haircut clarifies, a little less angry, maybe a little more hurt. “I mean you sitting there while I was getting my ass kicked.”

“None of my business.”

“None of your business?” The guy actually laughs, “None of your business? We’re… supposed to be a team.”

“The only team I’m on is mine and Snart’s. Besides, you had that beat down coming.”

Ray, of course, doesn’t look like he agrees with that.

“Oh well,” He almost, _almost_ growls. “I can’t sit back and watch an old man get pushed around.”

“Then you’re a bigger fool than I thought.” Which is really saying something.

He can’t see him anymore, the moron having finally sat down below him on the bottom bunk, but Mick’s sure he’s rolling his eyes.

Whatever, he doesn’t care. Even if he did, they’ve got bigger problems.

Three guards appear at their door, one of them sneering that they’re the ones he wants.

Great.

They get led through the prison, Haircut asks once where they’re going and gets a fist to the stomach for it. After that he, very wisely, shuts his trap.

Maybe he can learn.

They’re brought down a corridor that feels darker than the rest of this place, somehow. Mick doesn’t ask anything as they’re led down some stairs and then stopped in the middle of the hallway. It’s pitch black, but they’re stripped out of their shirts and chains are wrapped around their wrists, pulling their arms up over their heads until only their toes touch the ground. Mick knows an electroshock pad when he feels one, the adhesive mixed with wire tickling his scarred skin being something he’s felt once or twice over the years, but no mare than that. Ray, to his credit, makes little grunts and groans as the guard walks his body through the motions of what they want, but he doesn’t _say_ anything.

The lights go up and after his eyes adjust his heart sinks with the realization of just how deep into trouble they really are.

One of the guards, the one who brought them into the gulag in the first place, has removed his coat and rolled up his sleeves, tied on an apron and grabbed a really big knife.

Mick chances a look over at Ray, who’s looking ahead at their reflection in the giant pane of glass at the end of the hall. Someone’s got to be behind that, probably The Professor, watching them be tortured.

That old man better be every bit as self-centered as he comes off.

“So?” The guard asks, forcing Mick’s attention over to him standing at the shock controls. “Are you still planning… what did you threaten before? To go Rocky IV on my ass?”

Mick laughs, definitely one of his better threats.

“I’ve changed my mind.”  He gloats and the first shock comes, a little more than a tickle, up on par with what he would usually expect for a second or third shock, but apparently this guy has a fragile ego.

Once he gets his breath back, mostly, he decides to clarify.

“Ivan Drago lives at the end of the movie-”

Another, harder, shock.

It’s so sudden he cries out, and it lasts longer than it should.

The shocks go on for a while, long enough for Mick to start wondering if maybe The Professor is heartless after all. Savage must be getting impatient, because when the latest round of surges end the guard takes a hammer from somewhere, gets right in his face, draws back-

“Hey.” Ray coughs, “Can I get some water in here?”

They both look at him, like he’s lost it. He probably has.

“Something to drink?” He goes on, “I’m a little thirsty.”

Mick doesn’t know how to respond to this, at all. What is wrong with this idiot?

“A sandwich would be nice.” Ray keeps saying; an amused smile now on his face and Mick wants to just punch it right off. “A little turkey and mayo. They have mayo in Russia?”

He doesn’t get an answer.

“No?” He asks, “At least in America, you get a last meal. This communism really sucks.”

Is he trying to get himself killed?  
It’s then, with that thought, that Mick realizes that that is exactly what he’s trying to do.

It’s then, that he remembers Ray Palmer is more than just a man who wants to help the world. He’s a man who died, or was thought dead, and nobody gave a crap. CEO of this huge company on the cutting edge of everything, was thought dead in a freak explosion, no warning signs, and no one cared.

This time around, he wants his death to mean something.

“What are you doing, Boy Scout?” He asks, his voice urgent. This is what he would’ve done, back when he was a kid and still had some parts of a conscience somewhere inside him. He would’ve died for someone, anyone, after the fire; if only so one person would care.

“Yes, Boy Scout,” the guard sneers as he turns on him. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing compared to what I did to your mother last night.”

If Mick had use of his hands, he’d reach over and strangle Ray right now.

It doesn’t last much longer, Professor must have cracked, but it doesn’t end before Ray gets a few hard lashes with a paddle.

They’re led back to their cell, Ray more dragged than walked, and on the way there Mick catches sight of a guard down at the end of the hall pushing a body under a sheet on a table, a very familiar guard.

Snart.

Once they’re back in their cell Ray passes out, though not before giving him a heartfelt speech on teamwork and standing up for what you believe in.

It’s not too long after that when Snart shows up at the door, key and all.

“Nice costume.” Mick approves, his buddy smirking and handing him a guard suit of his own, along with his gun.

He taps Ray light on the face twice, then sticks his shrink suit into his pocket.

“Lets go.”

“What about him?” Mick asks the question before he can even think about stopping himself. “We can’t ditch him. He won’t survive.”

Snart huffs, the way he always does when he’s explaining something he thinks shouldn’t need it.

“Two guards walking out of here, not suspicious. Two guards carrying him out, suspicious.”

“He took a beating for me.”

“Raymond would take a beating for a total stranger.”

True, unfortunately.

“Mick, if our time in the can taught us anything, it’s we look after each other. It’s you and me, right?”

Yeah... it is. But that all started because he was a kid who wouldn’t have minded dying for the scrawny new kid, or anyone. Took him a long time to figure out that was no way to live, that he actually deserved to live.

Ray deserves that chance.

Snart’s not thrilled about it, but when the power goes out halfway through their escape and all the prisoner’s get loose they’ve got bigger problems to deal with.

They get through the halls, somehow, and down to the main lobby of the gulag without so much as one moron trying to fight them despite being dressed as guards.

Must be something about hauling around an unconscious inmate.

“That door leads to the loading bay.” Snart tells him, “From there you can get to the jump ship.”

“Where you going?” Mick demands, even while Ray starts to wake up on his shoulders.

“I got something to do.” Snart answers, and with that he’s gone.

 

* * *

 

Hours and one successful prison break later; Mick still doesn’t know what it was he had to do.

Maybe it was a part of Hunter’s plan, whatever it was, but when he asks Snart just says it was “nothing” and he doesn’t buy that. They’re all gathered around the office celebrating, and in that small a space it’s easy to see his best friend avoiding Blondie’s eyes.

Someday he’s gonna have to find out what their story is.

But not now, not when the ship suddenly lurches and he gets an up close meeting with the floor.

“We have been struck with an explosive projectile.” Gideon informs them all as they pick themselves up.

They’re scrambling for their jump seats when the ship rocks again, knocking down anyone who’s not sitting. Mick barely manages to grab on to his chair and pull himself in before Gideon announces that she’s pretty sure it’s Chronos shooting at them.

Great.

They get hit again, hard. So hard they’re knocked out of the temporal zone and crash into some random point of history.

They’re lucky the ship’s not on fire with all the sparks flying out of the lights and systems when they land.

Mick’s head is spinning, everyone’s groaning, and Ray leans over the edge of his seat and throws up.

Once they all get over the worst hangover ever they venture out to see where they’ve landed.

Everything’s one fire, so far Mick likes it.

“Wait, this is Star City.” Sara says after a minute of them looking around. “I thought you said the timeline was safe?”

“Yeah…” Hunter trails off, pulling some little thing out of his pocket and looking at it. “Star City was in tact in 2016. This… this is 2046.”

There’s a guy with a bow and arrow in a green suit who shows up and starts threatening them, the Star City Arrow, but what has Mick more interested is the fact that Sara talks to him like she _knows_ him.

She doesn’t, turns out, after he reveals his face. But up until then she thinks she does and he looks over at Leonard, whose still looking at the archer.

When The Arrow fires a shot, that’s when Mick decides to use his gun.

“This guy a friend of yours?” He calls out to Sara, and maybe even Snart, as they all scramble while the guy keeps shooting arrows. “I don’t like him!”

They all fire on the guy, everyone calling out comments from their respective hiding places as they do.

“That’s not Oliver Queen!” Sara says, and huh, that’s probably not something she was supposed to say out loud.

“Sure dresses like him.” He hears Ray say.

“Shoots arrow like him!” That one comes from Snart, and Mick pauses in his firing for the smallest fraction of a second.

He and Snart never had a run in with The Arrow, and Snart would’ve told him if it’d happened while he was on his own. He would’ve obsessed over it for weeks, easy.

Right?

“Well whoever he is,” Jax’s voice sounds out over the sounds of arrows and various types of guns. “I don’t plan on sticking around to get shish kebabbed by this dude!”

“Kid’s right.” Mick agrees while Snart shoots ice, and misses. “Let’s stay behind and kill him.”

His plan goes ignored, sadly, and they end up retreating back to the ship instead.

The team’s gathered around the bridge, Rip talking about futures and fluctuating timelines, but Mick’s not really listening.

He’s thinking back ten minutes, to Sara’s _“It’s me. Sara.”_ And Snart’s _“Shoots arrows like him.”_

Snart could’ve gotten that from all the news stories, sure, but if The Arrow knows Sara, and Snart knows Sara but he won’t say from where or when…

He needs an answer.

He tries going to Gideon, at the very least to see if she has some backstory on Sara, but turns out she was put offline during the crash.

And Hunter needs him and Snart to steal the parts to fix her.

“It’s not money. It’s not jewels.” He says; studying the piece of fried tech the Captain has handed him, to show him what he’s looking for. “It’s not a valuable artifact. You’re just lucky I’d steal anything right about now.”

Or, rather, he’ll take any excuse to corner Snart for answers.

“As I suspected.” Hunter says.

“We’ll get your gizmo.” Snart promises while he pulls on his gloves. “You just get this bucket flying again.”

Yup, perfect plan.

Until Sara strolls in.

“I’m coming with.” She announces, and Hunter start’s arguing, which is good, but of course Hunter never wins an argument and before Mick knows it both her and him are coming with.

So much for getting answers.

Still, it isn’t a total loss.

Snart and her, they stick close to each other while they’re walking. He’s pretty sure they don’t even know they’re doing it, but they are. She makes a comment about her sister; he follows up with one about that sister being a lawyer and her father a police captain.

“You’re point?” She asks him, her voice warning.

“Did one hell of a job.”

He’s egging her on, like he does most people, but there’s something in his voice Mick doesn’t quite recognize. Worry, maybe, or something like it. Something personal.

Why the hell are her sister and her pops personal?

They keep walking, the city burning in ruins around them, and Sara and Snart keep close.

When something only a few feet from them explodes and they hear the shouts they take cover on and abandoned school bus. Sara runs on first, and just to see what Snart will do Mick shoves his way past him and on second. Sara’s hiding in one row of seats, so Mick goes back and across the way.

Snart comes on and ducks down about halfway between them, but his side.

“It’s like world war three out there!” His partner comments, to which he agrees.

“It’s beautiful!”

He sees Hunter roll his eyes, and when he chances a look out the window The Arrow has joined the fray.

Or maybe he started it, hard to tell really.

“We need to find another route.” Hunter says, like there’s really going to be a way around all this.

Sara seems to have the same idea, that or she saw Arrow boy go down. She runs off the bus and Hunter chases after her, ordering him and Snart to stay put.

“We’re not gonna sit here right?” He asks soon as Hunter’s off the bus, “Imagine all the looting we could do in this chaos.”

Snart smirks that evil, and almost joyful, smirk that Mick’s come to love over the years; it’s a sign he’s going to get to have his fun.

“Why don’t we stretch our legs at that bank we passed three blocks back?”

It’s with a wide grin that Mick follows him off the bus.

They’re surrounded by a band of thieves almost immediately, and taking out their joke of a leader is easier than taking candy from a baby.

Once he’s down, the other thieves all looking at Mick to see what he’ll do next, well what can he do?

He takes the leader’s fur coat.

“Well this has been fun, but I think it’s time to leave.” Snart says, something dangerous in his eyes, something worried.

Mick had almost forgotten.

“Leave?” He asks with a chuckle, draping one arm around a girl, the kind who will keep herself close to whoever’s wearing this coat, he’s always liked those kinds of girls.

“Why would we leave?”

He shoots Snart a little shit-eating grin over his shoulder as he walks off towards the gang’s bikes. He may not be as good at reading people as Snart, but he damn well knows when he’s beaten the smartass, or at least thrown a wrench in something he’s got cooking but won’t talk about.

Maybe he will be getting those answers after all.

 

* * *

 

They end up going to a bar, the thieves treat him like a king, he almost forgets about getting answers from Snart. This place is a paradise, he’s not going to ruining it by worrying about how long Snart spent screwing an assassin or when and where the hell it happened.

“Your highness.” Speaking of Snart, Mick’s pretty sure he’s mocking him, but whatever. “Can I get a moment of your time, please?”

“Sure.” He answers; stepping down from the pool table he’s been standing on. “Ah, isn’t the future great?”

“We really should be getting back to Rip and Sara?”

Is he kidding?

“Why?”

“Because I’m not looking to put down roots here.” He says; looking around the bar like it disgusts him.

“Why not?” Mick demands, “It’s everything we’ve ever wanted. I got a gang that does everything I tell them to. I got a fur coat! I got a chalice! Speaking of…”

He holds out said chalice to Fonzie, or whatever his real name is, and gets a nice glass full of something strong.

“What about stopping Savage?”  
“What about it?” He refutes, “You’re the one who said we’re in this for the score, remember?”

Nothing.

“We could live like kings here.” He continues, “No cops, no heroes, just some fool in a green hoodie! It’s Christmas every day!” It’s as he says that that his girl comes up, her arms winding around him when he greets her. It’s almost possible to ignore that damn ache in his chest when there’s a pretty girl on his arm, another bonus to this time.

He walks off with her, leaves Snart there to think on what he’s said. This place is everything they’ve ever dreamed of, and not even a pretty blonde who can kickass should be enough to change that.

Hell, she could stay too if she wants.

But, as the night goes on, he’s starting to think that she is enough to change what Snart wants.

Snart, stubborn as always, doesn’t even try to enjoy himself and instead Mick finds him nodding off in a corner when he gets back from the back room. He rolls his eyes and lets himself get distracted by a drink, then another, and the night keeps going on in a party until some walking-dead-zombie-hunter-wannabes come in with their bats and their swords and stop the music.

“Who invited them?” He asks, and Fonzie tells him that word on the street is Deathstroke’s pissed about something.

“Deathstroke?” He asks, taking another sip of his drink. “What kind of name is that?”

Must be the kind that belongs to the dick who comes to the front of the newcomers and orders all of the thieves, his gang, to hit the streets and kill Green Arrow.

“Listen pal.” He growls, getting up and getting only a few inches away from the asshole’s face. “This is my gang. The only orders they take are from me.”

“Might be your gang, but it’s my city.”

He’s not happy about it, but standing up to that isn’t going to end well.

“Green Arrow is running with a female assassin in white, and a Brit in a brown coat. Kill them all.”

He leaves after saying that, and the gang starts packing up their stuff. Mick can almost feel the smugness coming off of Snart as he comes and stands next to him, an “I told you so” just waiting to be said.

“Looks like your new minions are about to go on a citywide manhunt for Rip and Sara.”

“So what?”

“They’re gonna kill our friends.”

“Since when did they become our friends?” He growls the question. Let the record show he doesn’t actually want Blondie and The Captain dead. Wouldn’t mind seeing Captain punched in the face again, but not dead. He just wants to know why Snart cares so damn much.

“You tell me,” Snart challenges, “You and Raymond seemed to get pretty tight back in Russia.”

“And what about you?” He asks before he can think better of it. “You’re the one who said Blondie wasn’t gonna get in our way.”

The glare he gets for that is long, and silent.

“Who is she-?”

“Mick.” Snart snaps, practically cutting him off. “It’s time to go.”

“You’re not the boss of me.” He growls, reaching for his gun only for a threat.

“Actually I am.”

They stare each other down, but Leonard knows when he’s beat, and he’s beat.

“Ok.” He says, “Let’s both take a deep breath.” He does, Mick doesn’t. “We’ll make ourselves a deal. You help me get to Rip and Sara, once they’re safe, we can have this conversation. Fair?”

Mick thinks on it a minute, weighing his options.

“You’ll tell me how you know her?” He asks, and something runs through Snart’s eyes for half a second, but he nods.

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

Fair. He’s not happy about it, but he needs to get back to his gang anyway, so he goes and he helps get Sara and The Captain to safety.

After thirty years, he really should know by now that Leonard Snart doesn’t play fair.


	16. What I Wouldn't Do

_“Once they’re safe, we can have this conversation. Fair?”_

Yeah, fair, except this is not a conversation that Leonard is at all prepared to have.

First of all, he can’t tell Mick the truth. Especially not now that they’re traveling through time and the poor guy has found a few years in which his mark stops hurting because his soulmate hasn’t died yet. He’d seemed so… so… so unsure of that. No idea how to feel, it’s not like Hunter would let him do anything to try and stop it. So now he’s going through time, sometimes not knowing when he’s going to feel empty and when he isn’t. He can’t know that Leonard doesn’t have to live like that.

He reacts, well, badly when he comes to in the brig, but eventually he cools down enough to be let out and doesn’t say much of anything for the rest of the time that they’re in Star City, especially to Leonard.

That pattern continues on through the next few days.

“Maybe we should tell him.” Sara murmurs one night, while they’re lying in her bed.

He’s been waiting for her to say it, to be honest. He told her about his and Mick’s little argument when she asked, he’s already lied to Mick and couldn’t bring himself to lie to her.

“Not the rest of the team.” She clarifies, not that he was confused.

She props herself up on her elbow, giving him a hard look. “I don’t want to be the cause of any problems between you and your partner.”

He laughs, a close-mouthed chuckle as he rolls his head on his pillow.

“It’s not you, it’s Mick. Or rather his soulmate.” He meets her eyes, then, her very unconvinced eyes, and he shifts to mirror her new position.

“Besides, how could you cause problems? There’s nothing going on.”

Yeah, he doesn’t even believe that himself.

He still doesn’t believe it at the end of the week, when he hasn’t spent a night in his own room. His excuse is he shares that room with Mick, which should probably be motivation to clear the air, rather than crawl back into bed with Sara.

She’s waiting for him to do something too, though apart from that one comment she hasn’t said anything. It’s his business, his problem; he’s the one who has to deal with it.

The two of them play a lot of cards over the course of the week, being holed up in the temporal zone while waiting around for The Captain to find Savage and the tension to snap there isn’t much else to do.

They’re in the middle of a game of gin in the doorway to the cargo hold when Mick storms out, stepping over them and leaving Leonard a little surprised he doesn’t step on them.

“Don’t give me that look.” He says in response to her raised eyebrow and half-scolding glare. “We’ve been locked up on this ship for almost a week, I’m not going to start a conversation that will set him off, badly, when there’s nowhere for him to get to get distance.”

She smirks, and plays another card.

“I’m just saying, even if you don’t tell him we’re soulmates, you have to tell him something.”

He knows he’s frowning, because he knows she’s right, but he isn’t going to acknowledge that right now. For now he is simply going to bask in the victory of beating her at gin.

* * *

 

Sara is trying to stay out of it.

Whatever is going on between Leonard and Mick is their business, even if it happens to deal with what is going on between her and Leonard.

Whatever that is.

Personally, she doesn’t really care if Mick knows or not. She’s not ready for the whole team to know she and Leonard are soulmates, she can’t handle their opinions or their expectations or whatever. But Mick won’t tell anyone, and she doesn’t see him as the sort to be watching the two of them expectantly.

But it’s Leonard’s call, even if he’s dragging his feet with making it.

Less than an hour after Mick’s little scene in the cargo hold Rip calls them all to the bridge and explains that they’ve received a distress signal from another timeship called The Acheron, stranded in deep space, and while they all agree it is most likely a trap, the ship’s updated database is their best bet at finding another lead on Savage. So they go, and Mick volunteers for the rescue team to go over with Rip, along with Stein and Jax.

Leaving her and Leonard behind to watch Ray and Kendra flirt.

Badly, she might add.

“Ooh, Mick had it wrong.” Len says, after they are subjected to listening to Ray and Kendra argue over which Star Trek character Ray is now that he’s in charge.

“This ship isn’t a prison. It’s a torture chamber.”

“Well, I don’t think Mick’s problem is with the ship.”

“You think it’s with me.”

It isn’t a question, it’s a statement; he knows exactly what she thinks.

“You did knock him out and force him to leave Star City 2046, which is like Disneyland for felons.”

“He’ll get over it.”

“And this is on top of lying to him.”

He shoots her a narrow, unappreciative, glare at that. She flits her eyes over to Ray and Kendra, but they’re too caught up in their own flirting to be paying attention to their conversation.

She’s already sitting sideways in a flight seat, her leg outstretched on the empty one next to her, and Leonard mirroring her position in the next set. She gets up anyway, moving one seat, not onto Leonard’s set but he puts his leg down anyway.

“Mick is your best friend.” She says, her elbows resting on her knees and her hands clasped together between her legs. “He deserves to know what’s going on.”

“And what is going on?”

Well, he’s got her there.

Still she levels a glare with him, ready to tell him he knows perfectly well what she means, but before she can a message comes through on the monitor from The Acheron, asking for “Acting Captain Raymond Palmer.”

Probably best to pay attention to this.

“’Ooh. Acting Captain. I like the sound of that.” Ray comments, getting up from Rip’s chair and with a roll of her eyes Sara joins him around the main control table, Leonard barely a step behind her.

“I’m Captain Palmer, who are you?”

“I’m the man holding your crew hostage.”

Honestly? Sara can’t say she’s surprised.

Ray and Kendra’s faces fall, and Leonard’s takes on an expression of mild worry, mixed mostly with something calculating. They’d half expected this, maybe a little more than half, but that doesn’t mean they came up with Plan B.

The next voice they hear they don’t see the owner of, he’s somewhere off the side of the screen, but it’s Rip.

“Captain Palmer, I’ve informed Mr. Valor of the fiery retribution you’ll rain down upon him if we are not released immediately.”

He doesn’t sound hurt, in fact he sounds a little bit smug. That can only be a good thing.

Of course, that changes when this Mr. Valor turns; they hear a loud “oof” and a minor scuffle, before all they’re seeing is a blur of Rip’s head being pressed harshly against the control panel on the screen.

Sara can’t help but notice Len rolling his eyes.

“I’m gonna make this real simple.” Valor growls at them, “You surrender your ship and I’ll drop you all off unharmed at a place and time of your choosing. You’ve got ten seconds to decide.”

“Or else what?” Ray asks, “If you want the Waverider for yourself there’s no way you’ll fire on us.”

Sara has to fight the urge, hard, to face palm. Clearly Ray has no prior experience with terrorists or anything like them, if he did he would know damaged goods aren’t always a deal breaker.

Of course, there’s always more than one potential consequence, as demonstrated by Valor pulling his rather large gun and informing them, in case they can’t see, which they can, that it is up against Rip’s head.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.” Ray immediately rushes, did that even take two seconds? “Ok. Just give me a chance to negotiate.”

“Ten… Nine…”

“Maybe he’s bluffing.” Ray suggests, hopeful as always.

“Eight…”

“Doesn’t feel like it.” Len says; his eyes glued to the screen.

“Seven…”

Then they hear Rip.

“You don’t know Palmer.” He gloats, “He survived the Imperiex onslaught.”

Before Ray, or any of them for that matter, can ask, the alarms start blaring and Gideon tells them to strap in because they’re about to open fire. She assures them they’re just firing warning shots, that none of their teammates over on the other ship are going to be hurt, but turns out the pirates over on said ship aren’t playing by the same rules.

“There’s a hull breach in the aft portion of the ship.” Gideon informs them after a very powerful blast rattles the ship. “And the pirates have taken out telemetry controls.”

Perfect.

“Gideon,” Ray says, with a dangerously serious look on his face. “Switch to manual.”

He then gets up to try and fly the ship away from the attackers, meanwhile Sara shares a glance with Leonard and they’re both in agreement.

If Ray’s flying them away from the danger, they had better do what they can to make it easier.

“Where are you guys going?” Kendra asks as they too throw up their restraints, but whereas Ray went for the Captains chair they head off of the bridge.

“To deal with the hole in the ship.” Sara answers.

They race down the halls of the ship in tandem, following both Gideon’s direction and the feel of wind moving opposite them. Eventually they end up in the engine room, face to face with a massive hole sucking the oxygen right out of the ship.

Leonard tries freezing it shut, and for a moment it looks as though that tactic is going to work, but his gun isn’t fully charged and he only manages to close off maybe two-thirds of the breech before his ice runs out, and per emergency protocol the engine room doors lock to prevent the rest of the ship from losing any more oxygen.

They can’t get the doors open, and Sara’s wondering idly if they’ll die of suffocation or hypothermia when Kendra and Ray appear on the other side of the door to try and help.

Not that they can.

Until they can somehow repair the rest of the hole from the outside, she and Leonard are stuck in this freezer.

They try to keep themselves moving at first, pacing around the space to keep their blood flowing and have it not seem as cold, but it isn’t long before they can’t bear that anymore and end up huddling together against one of the engines.

“So what’s worse?” Leonard finally asks her, breaking the heavy silence they’d fallen into. “Quick or slow death?”

She thinks, that’s a question that should be hypothetical but to her it isn’t. On one hand, she still has some slipping faith right now that Ray and Kendra are going to figure out a way to save them, though another shiver running through her serves as a reminder that they don’t have a lot of time. On the other hand, her first death happened so quickly, she didn’t even realize there was no hope until she was probably half dead already.

“Slow.” She finally answers, “Falling off that roof, realizing I was dying midway through the air, it was lonely.” Of all the things she could remember about her death, and she remembers the whole thing vividly, unfortunately, she wonders if it’s normal that’s the part she’s focusing on.

As if anything about her these days is normal.

“Like everybody I loved was a million miles away.”

And the tension is back.

The implications in that are heavy, but if she keeps her mouth shut they can both choose to ignore them.

“The closest I ever came to dying was, uh…” He drawls, taking the conversation from her, thankfully. “The day I met Mick.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” Her words aren’t quite a scoff, but they’re something close enough she regrets it.

“It wasn’t like that.” He assures her, not sounding truly bothered by her comment or tone. “It was my first day in Juvie. I was fourteen and the smallest kid in there, by far. Some of the older kids wanted to make sure I knew it.”

He pauses, for a second, his eyes trained carefully on a spot on the wall somewhere across the room.

“So they jumped me. I fought back but, one of them had a shiv and I figured that was it. Until Mick stepped in. They didn’t mess with me after that.”

He stops, briefly, like he’s still thinking.

“He’s been standing up for me ever since.”

She nods, minutely, thinking on it. She’s been trying to stay out of their fight, though she does put in a comment here or there, and now it looks like she’s reached here and there.

“I know you don’t want to hurt him.” She says, and Leonard looks back at her. “I get it. You both lost your soulmates; you both lived through that pain. His stayed dead, like most people, yours didn’t. But Leonard you can’t keep this from him forever.”

“And why not?” He snaps, but there’s no real heat to it, and she just fixes him with a knowing look, even if there is a healthy amount of fear in her heart as she realizes what her next words are.

“Because whether we like it or not, we both know where we’re headed.”

He’s quiet, for a long, long moment. She doesn’t have it in her to look at him through that, she can’t handle the rejection of it. She knows she’s right, despite their best efforts, which really weren’t made at all, they can’t seem to keep away from each other, and their sleeping together has been far more than just sleeping and sex even from the start.

“Ok.”

She whirls her head to look up at him when she hears that. His face his thoughtful, accepting. There’s no big declaration behind it, no real decision on when and how to tell Mick assuming they make it out of this, no plan for what _they’ll_ be, assuming they make it out of this. But she can see it in his eyes; everything about their weird relationship has just shifted, and more or less solidified.

 

* * *

 

Being walked down the halls of The Acheron by the time pirates, off to meet with their Captain, Mick is done.

He’s done with this mission, he’s done with these high-and-mighty losers who don’t give a rat’s ass about him, and if need be he will be done with Snart.

According to Hunter, Snart was the only thief he needed anyway.

The pirates push him to his knees once they reach the bridge, undignified, and he growls enough to let them know that.

That is the last time he’s going to stand to be pushed around.

“I’m listening.” Captain Valor says, crossing his arms.

“You want the Waverider.” Mick says simply, “I want to go home.”

“Where is home for a man like you?”

“2016, Central City.” For the record, Valor could drop him off in the Stone Age for all he cares.

“Of all the places in time, you want to go there?”

“That’s right,” Mick answers, though again, he doesn’t actually care. Drop him wherever, he just wants away from this shit-show.

But, then again, there could be some advantages to going back.

“To the exact moment Hunter recruited me and my partner on this suicidal mission of his. But this time, I’m gonna tell him where to shove it.”

And maybe beat some answers out of Snart while he’s at it.

“Let me get this straight.” Valor says, his face every bit amused as it is thoughtful. “I let you go, you’ll deliver the Waverider?”

“Yes. Do we have an accord?”

 

* * *

 

By the time the bulkhead doors finally open Leonard is almost convinced he’s already dead, even after he hears Gideon’s voice letting them know that the hole has been fixed and she is going to start slowly warming the room. It’s only after he actually starts to feel the temperature rise that he understands he is, in fact, miraculously alive.

“Sara.” He says, urgently, shaking her in his lap. “Sara wake up.”

“Hm?” She hums, stirring in his arms. He lets out a relieved sigh at that, grateful.

“We’re alive assassin.” He breathes, and despite the room warming he holds her tighter.

Soon they’re mostly thawed and able to get up, and it isn’t long after that they receive a message from Gideon that Mick escaped the time pirates and is on his way back in the jump ship.

They’re walking though the halls of the ship, on their way to the loading dock with Ray and Kendra to meet Mick when he gets back. He docks just at the same time they get there, and Leonard can’t explain it exactly, but all of a sudden when the jump ship docks it feels like a rock has settled in his stomach.

Something very bad is about to come through that door.

At first it’s just Mick, stalking forward with slow, heavy steps, and a scratched up face.

“Boys!” He shouts, “Ship’s all yours!”

Then a swarm of time pirates files out behind him.

Fuck.

“You son of a bitch.” Raymond says, and Leonard never thought he would be in agreement with him of all people, but here they are.

“What are you doing Mick?” He drawls, a careful demand.

“I’m getting us home.” His partner answers, plain, simple, and yet so very threatening. “Are you in?”

He doesn’t have a lot of options here, unfortunately, but he steps forward and draws his gun, keeping it aimed down but primed and charged, a fresh battery from the armory already at home inside it.

“Yeah.” He says, “Time to choose a side I guess.” He looks back to the team, meets Sara’s eyes, and then back to his partner.

“Chosen.”

He fires on the pirates.

“Bastard!” Mick’s shout, followed by the trail of fire from his gun, is the last contained thing that happens before all hell breaks loose.

He and the rest of the team scramble around the corner to get away from the flame, but it isn’t long before the pirates catch up to them.

“I can’t believe you did that!” Raymond calls to him as the brawl begins, but he sounds impressed rather than judgmental.

“Well I didn’t have much of a choice now did I?” He asks, and he quite literally throws a pirate at Raymond before the other man can even think of telling him he did.

He fights his way through the halls, Gideon informs him that Mick is going for the time drive, so he bashes through the pirates and back to the engine room, with every intention of at least attempting to talk some sense into his old friend.

But that goes out the window when he sees a trail of fire hitting Sara.

“Mick!” He shouts, and when Mick turns he ices him.

It’s only a stun, enough to knock him down and maybe give him a shiver, and then when he stalks forward with his gun leveled he glances at Sara; standing behind the nearest engine clutching her bicep and holding back tears.

“Is this what you want, Snart?” Mick growls, his voice dangerously low. “The score, the game, me? You want to give it all up for some girl?”

He knows there are tears in his own eyes, but he brings the gun up a notch anyway, and glances to Sara before back to Mick.

“She’s my marked.”

It comes out in a sad, fearful, and sorry whisper. But Mick’s eyes widen all the same; he’s heard.

“What?” He asks, “Your… Your soulmate died.”

“A year ago.” Sara speaks up, taking a step closer, and Leonard hates the feeling of worry that puts in his chest.

He hates how he’s afraid of what Mick might do to her.

“I was brought back a few months ago, in The Lazarus Pit.”

Mick knows that about her, he has for weeks, but Leonard sees it in his eyes when the pieces click together. Where he was that week he vanished, how he got tangled up with her, all of it. Not so much the how but the why, he sees it all come together and then Mick turns to him with a sneer.

“You lied to me.” He growls, “You lied!”

 He tries to get up, but Len won’t let him get that far. He leans forward and punches him hard enough to put him out cold, and then he just stands there, catching his breath, somewhat aware of Raymond and Kendra standing just behind him and having this entire thing.

“Waverider?” Rip’s voice, oddly enough, is the one to break the heavy silence, coming from over the loudspeaker. “This is Captain Hunter. We’ve regained control of the Acheron, what’s your status?”

That is an excellent question.

 

* * *

 

He’ll handle Mick.

He _has_ to handle Mick, he always does.

But things have changed, a lot, with him and maybe not so much with Mick, and that’s the problem.

He can’t handle Mick anymore, but there’s only one other person in all of history who can.

He just hopes they’re up for the challenge.

He gets a name and time from Gideon, and if he was expecting anything at all it was never this. But here he is; dragging his now-former partner through the mud in the middle of the night until he comes to what he’s fairly certain is the front entrance to a haphazardly built hut.

Gideon had tried to warn him of some timeline implications or whatever, he told her to shove it. Still, he won’t screw history by exposing time travel; he just needs to make sure he’s got the right place.

The door is a curtain, so he knocks on the wall, glancing down at Mick after, just to make sure he hasn’t woken.

Which he hasn’t.

“Yes?” A soft voice brings his attention back up. The woman standing before him is young, slightly more so than Sara even, and maybe he should’ve gone a few more years ahead of now, but Gideon had told him that if he absolutely insisted on doing this, this would be the ideal time.

“Amaya Jiwe?” He asks, and she nods, giving the sight of Mick’s prone body on the ground a suspicious look.

“Yes, who are you?”

That’s all he needs.

He whips out Rip’s memory flasher before she can demand an answer.


	17. Left Behind

“Ooh, Ow.” Sara hisses, despite all her pain tolerance training. But, for the record, not even Ra’s al Ghul would seriously expect her to remain stone faced through the process of charred fabric being removed from her own melted skin, not in trusted company anyway.

“Sorry…” Kendra winces, keeping her hand steady where it is, tweezers pricking painfully into the blistering burn.

“It’s fine.” She promises, lies, through a deep inhale. “Just hurry up.”

“I’m trying.” Kendra says, poking her again with the tweezers and if her body could seize up any more, it would. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Another hiss as she gets hold of a fiber, accompanied by a hiss of her own.

“More than I already am.”

Sara blinks away the tears in her eyes as Kendra wipes the clump of thread, mixed with a small amount of flesh, onto her gauze pad on the nearby table.

“Ok.” She huffs, turning back. “Hopefully just two more, and then Gideon can take over.”

Sara nods, frantically, that’s enticing at least.

She keeps a firm grip with both hands on the arms of the med chair she’s in, if she lets go she’s afraid she might hurt either Kendra or herself just trying to get away. The good news is distracting her mind from the pain is easy enough, the bad news is that distraction is thoughts of Leonard, and where he might have taken Mick in the jump ship.

He said he’d handle it; that was all he was willing to share at the team meeting.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Kendra’s voice interrupts her thoughts, and since it is far easier to keep from flinching when her eyes are trained on the ceiling she keeps them there as she shakes her head.

“Ok.”

The silence remains for the remainder of the time Kendra works on her, broken only by her whining or Kendra’s muttered apologies in response.

“Ok.” Her friend finally announces, “You’re done. Gideon?”

“Beginning the healing process now, Ms. Saunders.”

Sara actually sighs in relief not only at those sweet words, but also at the sudden feeling of her bicep growing cool, and then numb. Her whole body seems to deflate as Gideon heals her arm, and when she finally looks away from the ceiling Kendra is just finishing disposing her gauze pad, wiping her hands off on a towel and her eyes holding a sort of pain in them.

The quiet is awkward now that she doesn’t have the pain distracting her, and Kendra doesn’t have a task. Kendra could leave, unlike Sara, but she doesn’t. She just stands there.

Until Leonard appears in the doorway.

Even then she doesn’t leave straight away. First they both look to Leonard, and he looks to Kendra, and so does Sara. Kendra looks between the two of them, and then finally goes and squeezes past Len, though not before flashing Sara a look that let’s her know they aren’t done here.

Judging by the look Len gives when she passes by him, he knows too.

“Where’s Mick?” She asks, and he tenses where he’s standing, before coming in.

“With someone who can help him, hopefully.”

“And what does that mean?” She asks, even if she knows she isn’t going to be getting anything more out of him.

He sighs and takes Kendra’s stool, scooting it closer and his eyes flitting to where Gideon’s blue light is illuminating her bicep.

She glances at it too, the pain gone and in all honesty she’d nearly forgotten she’d been feeling it. She looks back to Leonard, and his eyes haven’t moved.

“I’m alright.” She says, and gains his attention in a snap. “Really. He just grazed me a little; most of the damage is from Kendra picking the fabric of my shirt out of it.”

He doesn’t look convinced, but he sighs anyway, onto the next problem.

“Speaking of Kendra…” He trails off, though she knows perfectly well what he’s talking about.

“She’s trying not to ask.” She says, leaning forward a bit when Gideon’s light vanishes, her fingers brushing lightly against the healed skin; not even a scar. “But she wants to.”

She catches his eyes lingering on the patch of skin, her shirt still torn around it, but soon he focuses back on her own gaze.

They have a lot to talk about.

The freezer, Ray and Kendra, Mick, the mission…

But, instead, Sara leans closer and closes the minimal distance left between her and Leonard. She doesn’t want to have even one more conversation. Not about them, not about anything. Things changed in that engine room, she doesn’t want to take it back.

Fortunately, he doesn’t seem too keen on that idea either.

He returns the kiss; gentle at first and then adds just a little more pressure. Not much, but enough to let her know where he stands.

They are going to have to face the facts sooner or later that Ray and Kendra now know their little secret, but thankfully that doesn’t look like it’s going to be a conversation they’ll be having straight away, because they got what they needed from The Acheron and now they have their next mission.

Which, turns out to be the perfect distraction for everyone.

They travel to 1958, a stupidly simple time that makes Martin nostalgic for a world that never really was, and has Jax dealing with problems no one should ever have to face.

Ray and Kendra are too busy playing newlyweds to ask about the confession that was made in the engine room, though Sara can tell it’s still on Kendra’s mind, at least.

It’s something in the way she looks at Ray, and then her eyes flit over to her and Leonard with this almost longing expression. Sara doesn’t think she’s even aware she’s doing it half the time. But, then again, she has her own things to worry about with this mission.

Ok, so she probably _shouldn’t_ be worrying over a closeted nurse, but she has to work at the hospital to keep an eye on Savage and the poor woman is denying herself a life with her marked just on the principal that her marked is a woman.

“So what?” She asks, sitting at a table in the break room with a bottle of something they definitely shouldn’t be drinking on duty between them.

She takes another swig.

The nurse, Lindsay, laughs at her like she’s insane.

“Because it’s wrong.” She says, although there is an admiring glint in her eyes.

“Says who?” Sara asks, “Men?”

The little snort accompanied by a look through her eyelashes that Lindsay gives… it’s cute. Sara will admit that much. If she and Leonard hadn’t _just_ sorted themselves out then maybe…

“So is your marked a woman?”

It isn’t a random question, not really, but it comes so abruptly that Sara nearly spits out her drink when she laughs.

“No.” She says, swallowing. “No my marked is a man, but that isn’t to say I’ve never been with a woman.”

Lindsay’s eyebrows shoot up at that, her cheeks flushing red, and yeah, she’s definitely cute; especially when she looks so scandalized.

However that ends up being a train of thought she can’t continue, duty calls, and in this case duty ends up being an army of mutant hawk people that includes Jax. Still, when all of that is said and done and they have some free time while waiting for Ray and Kendra to pack up the life they’ve been living for the past few days, Sara makes one quick pit stop at the hospital to give Lindsay one final nudge of encouragement to go after her marked.

She’s pretty sure it worked, she can be rather persuasive, but right now, she’s wondering if it was worth it.

It’s been ten minutes since she, Kendra, and Ray watched The Waverider take off without them, and still nothing. Sara’s not sure she can take any more of this waiting and wondering what happened.

Whether or not the team is still alive.

“They’re not coming back.” Her frustration finally voices itself, and Ray and Kendra turn to her with hurt expressions. “Let’s go.”

She starts to walk away, and there is hardly a second of silence before Ray starts rattling on about the Eagle Scouts and how you’re supposed to stay put when you’re lost.

“Well as a former member of The League of Assassins, the first rule when you’ve been attacked is to keep moving.”

“I sort of think League wisdom trumps Eagle scouts here. Plus Savage is still out there.” Kendra agrees, her expression to Ray completely apologetic, but whatever. Sara will take what she can get.

“Guys!” Ray exclaims, as though he cannot believe what he is hearing. “The rest of the team would not leave us marooned in 1958!” He then settles his eyes directly onto her. “Snart would not leave you marooned in 1958!”

“Except that is exactly what happened!” She exclaims, stepping into Ray’s space and at least he has the decency to step back.

She’s going to ignore the comment about Leonard, partly because it isn’t any of his damn business.

Partly because he isn’t wrong.

“We got here and the ship was taking off without us. Maybe you’re right, maybe the rest of the team wouldn’t leave us stranded here, and they would come back to this moment to get us back, but they didn’t!”

It’s then, in that moment, that she notices it.

She’s felt it these past few minutes, this dull ache in her wrist. She thought maybe she just moved her staff the wrong way sometime in the fight with the hawk mutants and pulled or bruised something. But now at all clicks. It isn’t a physical injury, and it isn’t going to fade in a day or two.

“They’re not coming back.”

 

* * *

 

When Leonard comes to the first thing he does is wonder how it is he isn’t dead.

He remembers the fight on The Waverider, the ship taking off, storming the bridge with Rip, confronting Chronos, and then… nothing.

But that damn ach is back in his chest.

He tries not to worry about it, after all based on the view out the windows of… wherever his is now; he’s in the temporal zone. Sara was among those of their team left in 1958, so hopefully she’s safe there and not...

She’s safe there. He’s going to go with that until he can’t.

With that thought somewhat calming him he moves on to trying to figure out exactly where he is.

He’s on a time ship, and handcuffed to a railing along the wall to and sitting on the steps to the bridge. The cuffs are of future tech, nothing he can get out of, yet.

He doesn’t think this ship is the Waverider, considering he’s seated on a step to a hallway where Rip’s office should be. There are no lights here, either, the only exception being the ominous green lights of some of the active machinery, and of course the time stream outside casting it’s soft glow through the front windows.

It’s then that he hears clunking footsteps coming up behind him, and the hairs on the back of his neck raise as his heart sinks deeper into his aching chest.

Chronos.

The hulking bounty hunter doesn’t even slow as he passes him, and settles right over his control console like Leonard isn’t even here.

“Uh… Hello?” He calls out, spreading his hands as best he can in the cuffs.

“A UFO sighting in Hub City 1960 has created a time anomaly. It looks like your friends survived.” He sounds bitter, but Leonard can’t help but feel relieved, if only the slightest bit.

Key word: Slightest.

1960, but they were left in 1958, meaning Sara has lived nearly two years in an ass-backwards time with Raymond-sunshine-Palmer, and Kendra, who lately he’s gotten the feeling is nosier than she lets on.

If all three of them are still alive, it will truly be a miracle.

“So uh…” He starts; once it’s become apparent Chronos isn’t going to say anything more. “What’s so special about me?”

Nothing.

“I mean, aside from my sparkling personality. Back on the Waverider you could’ve taken your boy, Rip. But you took me instead. Why?”

Nothing.

“Hey, if you’re gonna kill me, you could at least tell me what’s going on.”

Finally, Chronos turns around.

“You should’ve figured it out by now.”

He sounds… almost like he’s gloating. Yes, that’s it, gloating. Only Len doesn’t know why, and that doesn’t sit right with him. He should have figured out what by now?

Oh. He realizes exactly what, when Chronos takes off his helmet.

Mick.

What. The. Fuck?

“After all.” Chro-Mick. Mick sneers, stepping closer and kneeling before him. “I am supposed to be the dumb one.”

Mick stares at him, for a long moment, and he’s sure his old partner can see the wide range of emotions that fly through his normally stoic face. Anger. Confusion. Rage. More confusion, fear, and then, finally, the confusion takes over.

“How?” He asks, voice careful. He’s in way over his head in uncharted territory here, even he can admit that to himself.

Not to anyone else, certainly not to Mick, but to himself.

“I left you with Amaya.”

He still gets nothing from Mick whatsoever, and that’s what gets _him._ He pulls on is restraints, rattling them.

“I think I deserve to know what the hell is going on!”

“You deserve nothing.”

Ok, fair, he probably doesn’t, but right now he is far too worked up to admit that.

“Says the man who sold us out to the pirates!” He shouts, but Mick doesn’t react, and that might be the most unsettling thing about any of this.

Mick is a hothead, always has been, and when faced with shouting he should not be this cool and collected.

“I had to bring you somewhere Mick, you were a liability to the team!”

“You abandoned me.”

“I brought you to your soulmate!”

Mick is still quiet, though Len does see a minor twitch of his eye, as he leans in closer.

“You brought me to her, like you were bringing a dog to the pound.”

His words are nothing more than an icy whisper, and once he’s spoken them he rises back to his feet, meanders back to his control station.

“You gave up on me. Found something you wanted more, you hoped she could fix me.”

Leonard swallows. He wants to deny that, even just a tiny part of it, but he can’t.

“Who knows?” He rumbles, thoughtfully, in a sadistic way Leonard has always and yet never known him to. “Might’ve worked, except you knocked me out, and then you knocked her out, and the Time Masters found us before we woke up.”

His eyes widen, even if deep down it isn’t _really_ a surprise. Chronos works for the Time Masters after all, so of course they got their hands on him.

It’s how soon it happened, and who got caught up in it, that has his heart racing.

“What did they do to you?” He asks, but he isn’t sure he really wants to know.

Nevertheless, Mick answers.

“They took us to a place called The Vanishing Point. Used her against me until I cooperated, not that it took long. Couldn’t go home, wanted you and the team dead almost more than they did. They barely had to touch her.”

That doesn’t sit well in his stomach, nor does the inane fairytale his mind is telling him that the Time Masters simply let Amaya go after they convinced Mick to be their lap dog.

No, the Time Masters don’t work that way, from what he’s seen.

“Time doesn’t exist there the way it does on Earth.” Mick is still explaining, in long, full sentences even. “I spent lifetimes being reformed by them, training by them, fighting by them… Being reborn.”

He wants to ask what the hell happened to Amaya during all of this, if they did let her go or if they kept her around in case he ever got out of line, a failsafe of sorts. But to be honest it is hard enough to accept that he sentenced Mick to this, he doesn’t think he could handle hearing Amaya’s fate.

So, he settles for biting sarcasm.

“And, uh, when exactly did your new friends give you the, uh, lobotomy?”

Mick marches over, pissed, it might even be a sign of the Mick he knows if his face weren’t so carefully schooled.

“You think I was hunting you and your friends because the Time Masters made me?”

To be honest, no, he doesn’t.

But the words “They barely had to ask” still sting.


	18. Best Laid Plans

It’s silent on Mick’s ship for a long, long while.

There are still plenty of things that Leonard wants to say, questions he wants to ask, but he can’t bring himself to so much as open his mouth.

Finally, the quiet is broken by the ship’s AI; and Leonard wishes it wasn’t.

“Sir,” the computerized voice announces, a male and yet still as annoyingly chipper as Gideon. “Several anomalies in the timeline suggest that the Waverider has touched down in Nanda Parbat.”

Nanda Parbat? Does he even want to know what they’re doing in Nanda Parbat?

Probably not.

“Chart a course.” Mick orders his AI, “I used to think the most beautiful thing in the world was fire.” He muses, almost to himself as the ship rumbles with it’s new direction. “Now I know, it’s vengeance.”

This is so not how leaving him with his soulmate was supposed to turn out.

That aside, it has become pretty clear by now that Mick is beyond the point of listening to reason, so Leonard keeps his mouth shut as they land, harshly, and that’s on purpose he thinks. Still, he refuses to so much as groan when Mick rises from his pilot’s seat and stalks past him, helmet held under one arm and a very large gun slung across his armored body.

He sits and waits for his heavy footfalls to fade out down the corridor, and they start to, but then they stop short.

“Just remember Snart,” Mick’s voice rumbles from down the hall, and Len looks over his shoulder to see his old friend about to place his helmet over his head, a cold look in his eyes.

“You did this.”

Yeah, he can’t forget that, for all his trying.

Once Mick’s gone he knows he needs to act fast, and while he is still yet to come up with even one escape plan which consists of a beginning, a middle, and an end, there’s no time to keep thinking so he’s going to have to work with what he’s got.

He gets up, awkwardly; his hands twisted at funny angles in the cuffs but he moves anyway. He walks himself along the railing until he reaches a point where it’s joined to the wall, and he promptly bashes the cable-like links of the cuffs right through the joint. He’s still stuck, but it’s progress.

He keeps going until he reaches the end of the railing, and damn it it runs right into the floor. However, he is able to crane his neck far enough around the corner and catch a glimpse of his cold gun stowed away on a weapons rack; and he gets a truly awful idea.

But, desperate times.

Raising one leg and kicking at the shelf of the rack he manages to get his gun to the ground. He then lowers himself and stretches his leg to retrieve it, fumbling it into position with his feet. He glances for a moment, between his hands and the weapon between his ankles.

He really doesn’t want to do this, but he can’t let the team die, especially not for his mistakes.

He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and places his non-dominant hand as forward as he can, and then he kicks his heel.

It stings at first, a rough, bitter sting, but it soon grows numb and he isn’t feeling anything. He’s a little dizzy when he opens his eyes but shakes it off and gets to his knees. His eyes almost won’t focus on his ice block of a fist in front of him, his brain not wanting to process the sight. But he’s too far-gone now, backing out would be worse than following through at this point. He tries not to focus on the sick feeling in his stomach as he braces himself for what’s about to come. He keeps his thoughts on Sara, though that almost makes him sick as well, considering they’re in Nanda Parbat and she’s been trapped for two years in the past, and she was so lost before and… and…

He needs to get to her; it’s now or never.

One…

Two…

_SLAM._

He howls.

The sound of the ice shattering barely even registers with his ears, but the blinding pain caused by it sure as hell does. Leonard Snart is not a man who cries, especially not out of physical pain, but he feels the salty tears slipping out of the corners of his eyes as his head bangs against the rail and he’s too focused on staying semi-upright to worry about wiping them away.

He takes a deep, ragged, heavy breath as he _tries_ to will his vision into not swimming.

In… and out.

In… and out.

In…

The breath comes out choked that time, and it’s followed up by his lunch forcing it’s way back up and out, spewing out of him in a disgusting pile of vomit.

He gasps as soon as he’s done getting sick, not daring to bring either of his sleeves to his mouth to wipe it. His right hand and he’ll likely lose his balance, his left, well…

He doesn’t have time to get sick again.

Still breathing heavy, and not to mention tasting bile, he staggers up to his feet. He chokes again and a little more of his insides comes spurting out his lips before he can stop it, but he doesn’t collapse back to the ground and this time he does bring his right arm up to wipe it away. He needs to keep moving, to stop this before it’s too late.

Then he can collapse.

He stumbles his way through the ship and down the loading ramp, which Mick has conveniently left open. Thank God they touched down practically at the front steps of Nanda Parbat, he isn’t sure he could survive a hike up a Himalayan mountain.

Everything is still spinning around him, but he’s been here once before, in the future, and apparently not much is going to change in the next fifty-five years.

He can hear swords, and guns, and shouting somewhere in the depths of the city, so he follows the sound with his shoulder pressed heavily against the wall, dragging himself along until he comes to a fairly small chamber; where Chronos is one his knees and Sara is dressed in full assassin’s gear with a sword to his throat.

And that isn’t even to mention the rest of the team surrounding him with their own weapons and superpowers at the ready.

Peachy.

“Don’t kill him.” He manages to get out, and he hears the kid say his name, but his eyes are on Sara, pleading, while hers dart between his and his missing hand.

“Sorry?” Rip shouts, exasperated. “Don’t kill Chronos?”

“He’s not Chronos.” He snaps, and then his attention and his ire are back on Mick. “Show ‘em!”

He isn’t surprised when Mick doesn’t so much as move a single muscle, so he nods to Jax, and thankfully the kid takes the hint and removes that pesky helmet.

Yeah, this is going to be a conversation later.

* * *

 

Sara doesn’t know what to feel about… well, anything.

She helps Leonard on their way back to the ship, that much she can focus on. He doesn’t say anything; neither of them does, though she can tell he’s biting back some sarcastic remark for at least part of the time.

Whatever it is, she wishes he would just say it.

After leaving him in the med-bay she goes to her own room to change. It’s strange, being on the Waverider again. She thought she’d forgotten the paths of these hallways, she had _tried_ to forget them, but her feet take her down two rights and a left, and then she’s at a door that she wishes led to objects with more dust.

But, for the ship, it’s barely been an hour that she’s been gone.

Her mind is blank while she gets dressed, removing her league garb slowly until she’s in nothing but her undergarments, which for the league, meant underwear that could be pants by modern standards, and her chest wrapping.

It feels strange, trading the pants for panties, but good, and so much less itchy. Unwrapping her chest and replacing the fabrics with her once familiar bra, feels much the same.

She studies herself in the mirror before putting on the rest of her clothes. It’s been so long since she’s last seen her reflection, and with her hair pinned up in so many intricate ways it really doesn’t feel like it’s her she’s looking at. So she starts unraveling all the braids and the twists, one by one, until every inch of her blonde locks are hanging free around her face.

“Now there’s a sight.” The words are accompanied by a low, approving, whistle.

 Leonard is leaning against her doorway when she turns, a smile breaking over her face. She almost runs to him, almost jumps him, but then her mind brings her back to Nanda Parbat, and all the blood dripping from where his left hand should be.

Her eyes dart down, where the appendage should-… where it is.

“How…?”

He raises his eyebrows, a smirk of amusement on his face.

“Gideon.” He answers, “Want to see something?”

She nods, not entirely sure where he’s going with this, with that cocky grin and all. He steps into the room and crosses to her, raising his left arm between them for her to see the returned appendage.

“She said she’s sorry, but even she couldn’t do this without leaving a scar.”

He gives her a look, one that is rather telling, and with her fingers near trembling she reaches forward and gently tucks his sleeve down.

She’d known what he meant, but it still sends a shiver down her spine to see the thick, fading, jagged pink line that matches perfectly to the grey one on her own wrist.

The one that has finally, after two very long years, stopped aching.

“Well I guess that settles it.” She says after a moment, clasping his hand with both of hers and pulling herself closer to him, looking up at him through half lidded eyes.

“You, Leonard Snart, are stuck with me.”

 

* * *

 

Mick’s pissed when he gets dragged into the brig of the Waverider, but not nearly as pissed as the rest of the team seems to be with Snart. Sure, he wishes he’d been able to kill the bastard, and the rest of ‘em, but getting to watch as that cold, one handed, son of a bitch gets chewed out by the entire team for how wrong his “handling” of him went, it is pretty sweet.

Eventually the party dies, though. Snart gets to go off to the med bay for a new hand and the team decides they think he can be useful now that they have him, and convince themselves they can reach “the real him” or some shit like that. Ah well, it’s good to know for sure they don’t have the guts to kill him, and if at the end of the day he can’t get out of here, there’s always Plan B.

It’s awhile before Hunter comes in, the first shot at fixing him he supposes.

This ought to be good.

To his credit, the asshole manages to force out an apology for bringing him into this mess to begin with, and he even takes responsibility for Snart’s actions. A long time ago, Mick might have forgiven him.

But, he is no longer the fool he used to be.

The teams heading for Kasnia 2147, a time when Vandal Savage is sitting pretty close to power. Maybe he’ll kill them.

Ok, he is hoping _that_ doesn’t happen. He wants to kill them himself, and he’s still not really a fan of Savage either, even if he gets that for some weird reason the Time Masters need him alive.

It’s hours before anyone else comes in to see him, and it happens to be Sara.

“Ah finally.” He hums in approval. “Someone who’s willing to do a man’s job.”

“Not why I’m here.”

“It’s almost funny.” He sneers at her, “How you guys keep parading in here like it’s some kind of confessional.”

“Also not why I’m here.”

She’s pacing the room like she’s walking into a birthday party, so casual, and talking about not killing him like it’s the most conversational thing in the world.

“Ok,” he eventually gives, “I’ll bite.”

That’s when her face gets serious.

“Everybody’s out there arguing about whether or not we should kill this kid, because no one thinks he can change.” Ah, they’re going after that brat Perdegaton. “Made me think of you.”

She stops pacing, and sits down on the bench right next to the glass.

“You know no one thinks you can change.” It isn’t a question, “That’s why you’re in here.”

“The only reason I’m in here is if I get out, I’m gonna give Snart some payback he’s not walking away from.”

“He was trying to protect you.”

“Protect me from what?” He snaps, “From pain? I was empty almost my whole life-”

“He didn’t want you to think he was leaving-”

“Except that’s exactly what he did.” His voice is cold, stoic, much like his face. “This isn’t your fault Sara, what happened between Snart and me. It’s that bastard, always thinking he knows what’s best and not giving a damn about what I think.”

“Maybe.” She says with a nod, “But you aren’t two kids in Juvie anymore.”

She must see it on his face, the surprise of hearing that, and the tone in her voice suggesting a meaning behind it that she shouldn’t know.

“Yeah, he told me how you met. While you were selling us out to the pirates and the two of us were freezing to death in a compromised engine room.”

She gives him a moment to consider that, to consider a situation he really had nothing to do with. He wonders if she knows that.

“I’m not here to apologize for him, or to defend him.”

“Then why are you here?” He rumbles, and finally she looks at him.

“I could ask you the same question.”

He doesn’t have to think about it, and for that he is almost sorry, almost.

“I’m here to kill him.”

He is, without a doubt in his mind, until he gets the chance.

Snart comes to him, about time, and tells him that if he kills him he can walk so long as he doesn’t hurt the rest of the team. Fine by him, his word doesn’t mean a thing anyway.

Maybe that’s why he shouldn’t be surprised when he drops the idiot while he’s still clinging to consciousness.

Amaya’s teary eyes burning in his memory

“We had a deal, Mick.” Snart drawls, the sound of pain vibrating through his voice. “Kill me and you walk.”

He wonders, he really does, if the whole deal were just a gamble Snart was willing to take.

If it was, he has more guts than Mick’s been giving him credit for.

“It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” He keeps asking, “To get off the team.”

He’s sitting against the wall now, his eyes closed and tears burning in them as he remembers the last time he saw Snart. This bastard, lying before him in a bloody heap an inch away from death, had knocked him out, and when he woke up _she_ was there.

He remembers his first time in Iron Heights, barely twenty-two, with Snart below him on the bunk.

* * *

 

_“You ok up there, Mick?” Snart asks, the foot of his mattress rising with a gentle nudge from below. “You haven’t said anything all day, or eaten.”_

_He isn’t hungry, or in the mood to talk. But he should, at the very least, this is Snart’s first time in any real prison, and the last thing he needs is to be worrying about him._

_So, slowly, he climbs down._

_“She’s dead.”_

 

* * *

 

He blinks, and Snart starts to pick himself up, groaning and grunting the whole way.

* * *

 

_He almost doesn’t notice, when he wakes up, that his mark isn’t hurting. Ok, he does notice, actually, but he doesn’t really care. Since the start of the mission they’ve gone through plenty of years where his mark hasn’t given him any trouble. He’s too pissed at Snart anyway, the small mercy that he’s been marooned somewhere when his soulmate is alive is almost cruel given the circumstances._

_Speaking of which, where has he been marooned?_

_The lights above his head are dim, the floor cold, and he groans as he starts to pick himself up._

_“Hello?”_

_The voice is somewhere close, in the cell next to him, he realizes. Yep, he’s back in a cell, great._

_“Where are we? Who are you? Who was that man?”_

_The woman asking all these questions on the other side of the glass wall is young, close to Blondie’s age, maybe a little younger. She’s pretty too, not that he cares._

 

* * *

 

He almost laughs, thinking back on it. He would come to care. Care that she was pretty, care that she was safe; care about her. It took a long time, longer than the Time Masters expected even, but once it happened it happened fast, and before he knew it she was the only thing he cared about aside from his revenge.

But now…

“It doesn’t matter what I want.” He finally says, “Whether I stay or leave we’re all dead. I failed to bring you in, so the Time Masters aren’t taking any chances with Plan B.”


	19. Plan B

“You’re joking right?” Leonard begs through a hiss of pain, and that’s something he’s sure Mick has been dreaming about for a while now, but he’s not going to dwell on it.

“Nope.” Mick answers simply. He’s pacing the med bay, Leonard sitting in one of the chairs getting his newly broken ribs fixed up and holding an ice pack to his eye.

“I told you they got us both.”

“You also let me believe they only used her to torture you.” Leonard reminds him with a roll of his eyes, or his non-icing one anyway, and a wince. “You didn’t mention it was a two-way street.”

Mick doesn’t appear bothered by that insinuation in the least, and that doesn’t exactly sit right with him. Of course Mick has always had a unique ability to brush off his own pain rather easily, or at the very least he is a master at ignoring it.

He doesn’t like the thoughtful look on Mick’s face; it doesn’t belong there. His partner, or maybe former partner now, has always been a “burn first, ask questions later” type of guy, but this is his soulmate they’re talking about.

“Will she kill you?”

It’s a question with an answer that likely won’t help them overall; Leonard knows this. But still, for how much he screwed everything up for both Mick and Amaya, he needs to know.

To his surprise, Mick has to think for a minute.

“Maybe.” He finally says, “Hope so.”

“What?” He snarls, but the look Mick sends his way has him backpedaling, much to his own horror.

“You don’t know what they did to us.” Mick growls, his eyes containing a very dangerous type of cold steel in their grave expression. “To her. We were strangers, she held out longer, so the Time Masters had to find another way of getting her to comply. So yeah, if her choice is waste me or else, I hope she wastes me.”

Leonard knows he’s gaping. He wants to ask about that, about what “or else” might mean, but at the same time he isn’t sure he can handle knowing. It’s been a long day, and maybe now isn’t the time to go into the specifics of the Time Master’s favorite torture methods.

Fortunately, the universe seems to be in agreement with him, as Rip comes storming in right in that moment.

“Mr. Rory,” He greets Mick, “Good to see you back on our side.”

The low growl Mick gives is hardly reaffirming of his change of heart.

“We’ve got a new problem.” Len speaks up and Rip sighs.

“Don’t we always?” He mutters, “What is it?”

It isn’t Len who answers, but Mick.

“You ever heard of The Pilgrim?”

 

* * *

 

“So,” Sara says, seated on her bed with her legs crossed whilst Leonard take up the rest of the mattress, his legs propped over hers. “You had Gideon find Mick’s soulmate, left him with her in 1945, knocked her out so you wouldn’t have to explain time travel, and the Time Masters found them before they woke up and turned them both into bounty hunters?”

“Not my best plan.” He admits, and she hums in agreement.

“I’d say it’s probably your worst.”

He groans this time, to which she can’t help but laugh just a little. However, this is a very serious matter, so her laughter fades quickly and of it’s own accord her hand finds his and her fingers start to play innocently between his, eventually finding their way to the new scar surrounding his wrist.

“We saved Mick.” She finally tells him, “We can save her too.”

He grunts, considering, and so she pulls on his arm to sit him up.

“Hey,” she says seriously, “You brought me back from the dead.”

“Your sister did that.”

“She helped.” She argues with a small smirk, “But without you they might not have been able to save my soul.

He hums, apparently not quite so reassured by her reminder, and so she gives his hand a gentle squeeze.

“It’ll be fine.” She promises, “They’ll be fine.”

He doesn’t look like he really believes her, but for the record, she doesn’t really believe herself. She isn’t exactly one to have blind faith, and she knows enough about brainwashed killers to know that betting on two to bring lightness out of each other is a bet you will sooner lose than win.

If Leonard is planning on voicing any doubts in her, and she’s convinced he is, he doesn’t get the chance before Gideon comes over the speaker system.

“Captain Hunter is requesting everyone’s presence on the bridge. We have located The Pilgrim’s first target.”

* * *

 

Turns out, she is willing to kill Mick. He’s her first target, right after the fire. This is followed by Sara before The Gambit, who she nearly gets, and their rescue timing is getting short and shorter.

The only reason they find The Pilgrim when she’s going after Raymond is because he all but drops dead on the ship.

Len goes in with Sara and Firestorm to stop her from beating the shit out of their teammate in his office in 2014, Firestorm making the first entrance via crashing through the roof, really he and Sara are just there as backup, but thank god they are.

She sticks one arm out, and freezes Firestorm mid air.

“What the…” Sara gasps under her breath, but despite it’s urgency Len is hardly focused on the strange power. He’s focused more on the concentrated scowl, the dark leathers, the gun in her hand and the knife belt around her waist… all of it sending his mind reeling back to the kind eyed, cautious woman whose wall he had knocked on not so long ago.

For him, anyway.

She shoots a blast from her gun their way, towards Raymond, and there’s no more time to be hung up on what she used to be. He has his own gun already primed and so he covers Sara with an icy blast aimed towards The Pilgrim, and the surprise of it is enough to throw her aim and keep him and Sara from ending up frozen in time or worse. They get past Raymond out, who talks every bit as much as the current version, and to a hospital, where they are sure to wipe his memory before leaving him to wander in.

Back on the ship the consensus is that the only logical plan now is to remove the rest of them from the timeline as newborns, and Leonard hates that there isn’t another, less drastic, option.

“It’s suicidal.” Mick agrees, him joining their little rescue party on the bridge, “If we take too long getting them home-”

“Then history is altered.” Rip finishes for him, his voice already defeated.

Len glances to Mick, as does Sara. The rest of the team doesn’t know who The Pilgrim really is, not yet. That’s Mick’s secret to tell, and right now Len can’t blame him for not sharing. But, at the same time, if he doesn’t share and they end up taking her down…

Well, he’ll do his best to keep that from happening.

“There won’t be a home to go back to.” Their ever-mighty Captain continues, “You’ll disappear from the minds of everyone who’s ever known you.”

Ouch.

Jax and Stein, they’re understandably more than a little broken up by this potential outcome. Leonard can live with it, being a temporal outsider for the rest of his life. He’d still have Sara, his only real worry is Lisa, but maybe without him there to make things that much more complicated her mom will take her with her when she leaves Lewis. If not, well, worst comes to worst he’ll go and abduct baby Lisa from the timeline.

But, a problem for later.

“Yeah, and my…” Mick trails off, purposely, “Oh yeah, I don’t have anyone.”

Again, ouch.

Sara looks over at him, and he returns her gaze. This sucks, and they have both caught the edge of hurt in Mick’s voice that he thinks the others might have missed, or at the very least attributed it to something else entirely.

He waits until Mick has ambled out of the room, his steps just a touch slower than normal, and once he’s gone Leonard blinks at Sara, letting her know he’ll handle it; and not so poorly this time.

 

* * *

 

When Len goes off to find Mick, Sara takes her own leave off to find Kendra. Ever since returning to the ship they’ve been… she’ll say friends. To her credit, Kendra has still refrained from asking about the whole soulmate thing, and so has Ray, which she suspects is Kendra’s doing. They’ve been training and talking, about Ray and other things. Girl talk. She hasn’t had that in a long time.

And right now, she could really use some.

Interestingly enough, it takes her a long time to find the other woman, and when she eventually does she finds her hidden away behind the engines in the furthest corner of the ship.

“Hey,” She greets Kendra, who looks over her shoulder to acknowledge her.

“Hey.”

She looks anxious, very anxious, actually.

“How’s Ray?” She asks, after all Kendra’s apparent hiding and unease could very well be explained by the traumatic ordeal of her boyfriend nearly dying.

“Fine. Um, his younger self is in the hospital, so our Ray is healing rather quickly.”

She sounds almost, not upset by that but… it’s not the problem.

“You don’t seem too happy about it.” Sara observes, settling into a seat on the corner of the engine tank opposite Kendra.

“I’m not unhappy.” Kendra counters, though she still sounds to be exactly that. “I’m… I’m engaged.”

She holds up her hand and new ring, and ok, Sara certainly wasn’t expecting to hear that when she came in here and found her friend sulking.

She gapes for a minute, lips parted and mouth dry.

“Well,” she finally manages, “You don’t seem too happy about that either.”

Kendra sighs and sinks back against the engine tank.

“It’s not that, it’s…” She sighs again, and sits up, leaning her elbows onto her knees. “I know you don’t really like to talk about the whole soulmate thing, but I really need to right now. Carter was mine, and Ray… I love Ray, but-”

“But he’s not your soulmate.”

Kendra nods, sadly.

“Yeah.”

Sara sighs, long and slow, thinking the whole thing through. It’s then that she closes her eyes with a guilty wince.

“Actually, it’s funny you say that, you know about me not liking to talk about it. That’s kind of what I came down here for.” When she looks Kendra looks shocked, not to mention like she might just brush her whole problem aside in order to hear this if she has to.

“The Pilgrim,” Sara starts, “She’s Mick’s.”

Now, it’s Kendra’s turn to gape.

“What?”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t!” Kendra promises quickly. “Never. But… Are you sure?”

Sara nods, “Yeah, Len had Gideon find her, back after Mick betrayed us. He brought him to her, but then-”

“The Time Masters found them both.” Kendra finishes for her, and she nods.

“Yeah.”

They’re quiet a minute, or two.

“Wow.” Kendra finally says, “So if we kill her-”

“We take out Mick’s soulmate.” She confirms, “Yeah, go team.”

 

* * *

 

“And where are you going?” Leonard asks, he gave Mick enough of a head start before following, a little surprised to find him in the armory and bringing out his Chronos gear.

“I got a plan B of my own.” His old friend grumbles, loading up his blaster.

“And, dare I ask, what might that be?”

“None of your business.”

“Mick.”

Probably not the best thing to say.

Mick turns, just barely, and glares at him from over his shoulder.

“We’re not doing this.” He says flatly, plain and simple. “I let you live, and for now I’m sticking around, but you’re not the boss of me anymore. Got it?”

He doesn’t answer, not verbally, but yeah, he’s got it.

“Just don’t do anything too rash, ok?”

Mick nods, and turns back to his gear, and that, Leonard supposes, is the best he’s going to get.

 

* * *

 

By the end of the day all their younger selves have been rescued and hidden away with Rip’s mother at a nice little house in a dimension somewhere outside of time, something Leonard makes sure to give Rip plenty of crap for.

Anyway, getting back on the ship, things aren’t quite as bright and optimistic as they’d hoped.

And really, that hadn’t been a high hope.

“Gideon has intercepted a trans-chronal beacon.” Rip announces, his face grave as he orders the computer to show them.

The video screen flicks to life with The Pilgrim’s scowling image; looks like Mick isn’t the only one with their own plan B.

Images appear on the screen, one by one. The first of Lisa, the next of Sara’s father, then The Professor’s wife, all of them narrated over by The Pilgrim promising kill them all, violently, if they don’t surrender their younger selves.

It’s silent. For a long time, during which Len finds himself looking around the bridge and wondering where in history Mick is, as well as if he’ll make it back before anything irreversible happens.

Finally Rip says something, asks Gideon about The Pilgrim’s callback number, and when there is no argument he has their resident AI take advantage of it.

“What are you planning to do?” Stein asks, but before Rip can answer, their enemy has picked up.

“Captain Hunter.” She says, her voice dark.

“Look,” Rip says, “I’m going to make this easy-”

“I already have.” She interrupts, “The lives of your team’s nearest and dearest for their younger selves.”

“And I’m going to counter that demand with an offer of my own.” Rip barks, “I will surrender myself if you spare the lives of my crew and their loved ones.”

Well, this just tipped the scales of insanity.

Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, Leonard isn’t really sure at this point in the mission, The Pilgrim doesn’t even consider it.

“A noble gesture.” She tells him, almost mocking. “But worthless. My directive is to eliminate your entire team, not just you.”

“Then how about this?” It’s Mick’s voice that sounds out, from the bridge’s entryway. He isn’t wearing his Chronos armor, though his gun is secured firmly to his back by a cross body strap. At his front, however, is what Leonard can only assume is his brilliant plan B.

A goddamn baby.

“You let them go, and I don’t kill her.”


	20. Negotiation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so if you can't tell, this story has segwayed itself into being Mick and Amaya's story. There is still going to be plenty of Captain Canary, don't you worry, but they're going to be stepping out of the spotlight for a bit!

Mick sees her eyes narrow, and her scowling lips part. He knows exactly what she’s thinking, trying to figure out if he’s really crossed this line or not.

“You rotten son of a bitch.” She sneers, leaning closer to her camera, and he can just imagine her sharp nails are leaving little divots in the underside of her control panel. “You wouldn’t-”

“Wouldn’t I?” He interrupts, before she can get too far, before he loses control of the situation. “I’ve done things, Amaya, you have too.”

He sees her reel a little bit at the sound of that name. They haven’t used their real names in so long, not outside of their quarters anyway.

“Just so we’re clear-”

“It ain’t you.” He interrupts, and he holds her hard, furious gaze. “If that’s what you’re wondering.”

She scowls at him for another second longer, and then the screen goes black.

Not that it’s a reprieve.

No, the instant the communication is cut is the same instant in which Hunter is rounding on him, the rest of the team looking on.

“What.” The Captain demands, “Did you do?”

“Bought us some time.” He answers easily, even if Hunter looks completely appalled.

“Bought us some time?” He questions, dumbstruck. “She signed off!”

“She won’t do anything.” He promises, adjusting his hold on the little thing starting to squirm in his arms.

“How can you be sure?” Hunter demands, “How can you be sure she won’t call your bluff-?”

“Who says I’m bluffing?”

He is, for the record.

“And how can you be sure she will value that child’s life enough to-?”

“Because it’s her kid.”

This time, for once, Hunter just stares at him, as does everyone else.

“Pilgrim’s real name is Amaya Jiwe.” He huffs, adjusting his hold on the baby as she starts to squirm, looking around at everyone and everything. “This is Esi. Time Masters used to threaten her to get Amaya to comply, until they didn’t need to anymore.”

The expressions of the others don’t change, and Esi starts fussing more, little cries coming from her that are only going to get worse. So he turns and goes, off to manage her. Once he’s off the bridge, the second he’s around the corner of the door, he lets out a nervous breath. What the hell did he just do?

He looks down at Esi, starting to scream by now, and he’s plunged even deeper into a panic. Maybe he should turn back and hand her over to Kendra; she’d seemed the most knowledgeable about babies when they brought back three in the younger versions of themselves. Or even Sara, her younger self had been at the height of her babysitting days, she’s got to remember something, right? Or Hunter had a kid; he probably knows a thing or two about this. In any case, his younger self had been useless with the babies; holding whatever one was calm while mini-Sara did all the work with the others.

Yeah, he should turn around and hand her over.

But his feet have brought him to the galley, and he shifts Esi into one arm as he opens their cup cabinet, and then scowls.

“Gideon.” He practically has to shout over Esi’s crying. “Can you make a bottle for her?”

“Of course, Mr. Rory.” The computer answers, and he’s not sure if it’s annoyance or teasing he hears in her tone, or both, but that’s last on his list of priorities right now.

He brings his other hand to Esi’s back while he waits for the bottle, rubbing gentle strokes up and down it, rocking her back and forth, even if it’s all useless.

“It’s alright kid,” he whispers to her. “I’m not gonna hurt ya.” She doesn’t know what he’s talking about, thankfully, but he still says it, maybe more to assure himself than her.

“I’m not gonna hurt ya.”

 

* * *

 

_Mick is sitting on the ground in the cell, staring at his lighter and imagining nothing in particular at its mercy, when they bring her back._

_They’re sharing a cell now, Time Masters probably think it’ll get them close enough to care enough about each other to the point they can be used against one another in torture. Whatever. It’s probably more for her torture than his. They still torture him plenty with the damn conditioning, but he’s got a feeling he’s one of their easier cases. He already has a deep love of destruction._

_He doesn’t look up right away, which is why he gets so far in his thoughts, but when he does look up those halt in their tracks._

_Amaya takes the torture better than he would’ve thought at first, always. She’ll be brought back limping, burns on the sides of her head and back of her neck. But she always has her head held high._

_Not tonight._

_Tonight her eyes are wide and glassy; her steps slow and staggering, and dry tear tracks down her face._

_He watches her long after the guard has closed the door. She just stands there, shaking, until she finally looks at him._

_“They’re going to go after my daughter.”_

_He closes his lighter and blinks at her._

_She’s mentioned her daughter before. Esi, five-months-old. Back when they first woke up here she was all she could worry about, after the obligatory “who, what, when, where, why”. Then came the assurance from the Time Masters that Esi was fine, safe with her grandmother, and it would stay that way so long as Amaya complied._

_“It a sure thing?” He asks, and she shakes her head._

_“I have until tomorrow to… to change my tune.”_

* * *

 

She did.

That night - they didn’t even wait until the next day like they said - she came limping back into their cell with her chin ducked low and more tear tracks on her face, but she told him Esi was going to live another day. Then another, then another, then another… until she finally just stopped mentioning it.

By now he’s sitting on a barstool, Esi sucking down her bottle greedily, and he sighs.

“Your mom’s been through a lot kid.” He huffs, near mesmerized by her. She is a cute little thing, and she looks a hell of a lot like Amaya. She has the same deep brown eyes, the same dark hair, even the same little nose.

“You’re a lot better with her than little you was with me.”

He looks up when he hears Snart. His old friend, his partner, is slouched in the doorway; his arms folded over himself and his face is crunched in a carefully curious expression.

“I can’t help but wonder-”

He snorts, of all the stupid things for Snart to be thinking about right now.

“She ain’t mine.”  He promises, no, she wouldn’t be nearly so cute if she had any of him in her genes. “Arranged marriages are big in Zambesi, least in Amaya’s time they are. Husband died in some raid in 1944, couple months before Esi was born.”

Snart’s eyes flick down with that, guilty, he thinks.

“I’m sorry, Mick.” He says, and when Mick looks back up, damn, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen Snart look so genuinely after saying that word. “I’ve messed a lot of things up. For you, for Amaya.” He nods to the baby with an especially apologetic look. “For Esi.”

He just stares at Leonard for a moment, trying to come up with a response. His first instinct is to agree, he hasn’t forgiven him so much yet that he wouldn’t enjoy rubbing his self-righteous nose in the consequences of his actions a little bit. But, given what’s currently at stake, those are some pretty big consequences.

Esi pushes her bottle away right then, formula dribbling down her chin and Mick wipes it away with his hand. He decides to handle this first, then Snart. He reaches for a napkin and puts it on his shoulder, it’s what he’s seen done in movies, and maneuvers Esi up there and pats her light on the back until he hears a little hiccup. Snart watches him the whole time, and he can only imagine what he’s thinking. Soon as he’s realizes he isn’t getting anything more than that little hiccup he brings Esi back into a more comfortable hold and gets up and tosses the napkin in the trash, hardly anything on it.

“You tried to help.” He admits, solemnly. “I’m not saying you went about it right, but, you couldn’t know the Time Masters would find us, or they would even care.”

Snart doesn’t give much of a reaction, not that Mick was really expecting one.

After all, they don’t do feelings.

“I want to get her away from them.” He finds himself blurting out, and he also finds himself looking to Snart for a plan.

Snart, however, just stares back at him with a hard and considering look.

“Do you think she’ll come?”

He gulps, his mind filing through all the unspeakable things he and Amaya have both done since completing their training at The Vanishing Point; and that is a lot of horror. He looks down at Esi, content in his arms, and tries to remember the last time he heard Amaya so much as utter her name.

“I don’t know.” He finally answers, and he feels so powerless. What he really wants is impossible.

He wants her to have never been The Pilgrim. He wants her to not have the baggage of all the centuries they lived out at The Vanishing Point. He still remembers that tender, caring woman she used to be.

It’s still inside her. He’s seen it in the way she looks at him before he would leave on assignment, felt it in the gentle touch of her fingers when she bandages a wound for him. He knows it’s there from how she holds onto him in bed after they…

Well, he knows it’s there.

The question that’s bugging him is, is it enough?

 

* * *

 

They still haven’t heard from her by the time the ship’s night cycle rolls around. It feels like they’re walking around waiting for a bomb to go off, and maybe they are, it’d be an effective way to kill all their loved ones at once.

But Mick knows Amaya, and she won’t touch them so long as she thinks there’s even the slightest chance her daughter will suffer for it.

Or, at least, that’s what he hopes.

Esi is every part a distraction from, as well as a reminder of, what they’re waiting on. She’s something to take care of, at least, and her problems such as diapers and hunger are things that can be solved right away. She doesn’t seem to notice she’s on a ship full of strangers. Mick had gone and taken her from the same night he and Amaya were taken, for when this works; he didn’t want her to not recognize her own mother.

Anyway, his room isn’t exactly “baby friendly”, he’s been crashing in a spare with no bed since coming back, he’s not ready to share with Snart again just yet. But it’s pretty bare, and it ain’t like anyone else’s room is totally baby proofed, so he drags out his laundry basket and packs it with pillows and blankets for Esi to sleep in.

Once she’s down, and he’s confident she’s not waking back up soon, he heads to the bridge.

It’s still early, the others aren’t all asleep yet, but the bridge is still empty.

Perfect.

“Gideon.” He calls the name like it’s an order in itself, “Call The Pilgrim.”

The AI doesn’t answer, be he knows she’s doing it, and after a few seconds of tense silence the screen flicks to life and he’s staring the same scowl he was a few hours ago.

“What do you want?” She snarls.

“Make sure your captives are still alive-.”

“They’re fine.” She snaps, right on the heels of his demand. “My daughter?”

“Sleeping like a baby.”

That puts her at ease a little bit, or at least it looks like it. Her stiff shoulders lose some of their tension and her eyes flick down for just a second, relieved.

“You don’t have to be their dog Amaya.” He says, and in response she laughs through a sad smile.

“Now that’s where you’re wrong.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.” She insists, the words soft and regrettable, and while he is glad to see that part of her does still exist, just like he thought, it still sends a chill through him.

“You’re on the wrong side of this, Mick.” She tells him, “Say I don’t kill you, say you and your friends _do_ take down Vandal Savage. Then what? You’re still fugitives. The Time Masters will still be after you.”

This isn’t news to him, not really. He’s not looking through rose-colored glasses like Hunter. He isn’t so naïve as to think that once Savage is out of the way the Time Masters will magically see reason and everything will be hunky-dory. But it is a problem he’s been keeping on the back burner, content to deal with it later.

But, now that it’s been yanked to the forefront, he’s got to admit it is a problem.

Well, he only knows one effective way to deal with problems.

“What if we took them out?”

He sees her eyes widen with interest, and he can’t help the evil little grin tugging at the corner of his lips. He knew she could never be so brainwashed as to truly be on the Time Master’s side. Most people go mad under the torture, but not them. They’d each had something to hold on to.

Still, while the interest is there, but he can see clear as day it ain’t agreement.

“What?” She asks, everything about the way she says the word letting him know exactly how far gone she thinks his sanity is.

She’s probably right.

“We take ‘em out.” He says again, committed to the idea now that he’s suggested it. “Come on, you and me are luckier than most people they get their hands on and we’re still all kinds of screwed up.”

“Mick…”

“They’ve done a lot of bad, you know that. They’re corrupt.”

“Maybe.” She admits, “But without them who’s going to safeguard time?”

“They’re humans,” he argues, “There has to have been a point before they existed and things were just fine.”

“You know that isn’t how it works.”

She’s right, he does. Time isn’t as linear as most people think. Everything happens simultaneously, but separately. The Time Masters have always existed, always overseen everything, because there is no beginning and ending. Not really.

“They’ve done good, too.” Amaya says, “There are wars that could’ve been much worse if Time Masters hadn’t intervened, rogue time travelers who could’ve done so much harm if we hadn’t stopped them.”

“And us?” He asks her, his voice dark. “What were we? Casualties? We didn’t ask for what they did to us.”

“They wanted you dead and gave you a second chance.”

“And you?” He demands, ignoring the warning tone of her voice. “First off, what they did to me was no mercy-”

“You haven’t always felt that way-”

“Second off.” He barks, his voice rising, his patients thinning. “They ripped you from your life, forced you to kill at their command. Threatened-”

“Threatened who?” She interrupts, “My daughter? You’re one to talk about that.”

He looks at her for almost a full minute. He just watches her, wracking his brain for a next move, until he finally sighs.

“Send me your coordinates.” He requests, “I’ll bring her.”

She blinks at him, clearly surprised by the sincerity.

“I’m not giving back your friend’s loved ones.”

“I know.” He admits in defeat. “Just don’t kill ‘em till I get there?” He requests, looking at her image through his sorry lashes. “Come on,” he says through a roll of his eyes. “Least you can do is let me say sorry.”

She considers it, and him, for a moment.

“Come alone.” She instructs, “And we have an accord.”

He nods, his head low, but accepting.

 

* * *

 

As soon as her transmission with Mick is cut, as soon as the coordinates are sent, Amaya lets out a deep and shuttering breath. She just stands there, looking at her control panel, for what feels like an eternity. The news that Mick had gone rogue, she can admit that had sent a shock through her system. He had always been willing to comply with what the Time Masters wanted, more than her anyway. He wanted to watch the world, and his old team, burn to the ground. He’d had his moments of resistance of course, but those were mostly brought out by his hatred of authority when it isn’t in line with his own ambitions.

Maybe this shouldn’t be such a surprise.

The lengths he’s willing to go, kidnapping her daughter, that shouldn’t be a shock either. She has seen him do far worse, hell she’s _helped_ him do far worse. But to do this against her… she thought they were more to each other than another mark.

Then again, she does have his mother hostage because she’s supposed to kill his younger self.

She’s been holding out hope the Time Masters will realize how much damage that will do to history and call it off.

She isn’t ashamed to admit that she is anxiously pacing the floor by the time her monitors pick up the Waverider’s jump ship outside. She watches on the screen as Mick climbs out, alone like he promised, with the exception of her daughter cradled in the crook of his arm.

She gasps at the sight, her throat going dry. It’s been so long since she’s seen Esi, she’s not sure she even really remembers what she looks like. She feels like she’s going to be sick, but there’s no time for that. Mick’s at the door, looking up at the camera impatiently.

She goes over and pulls the door open, wide eyes on the face she saw not even a week ago, and yet it feels like forever. He looks so different, in street clothes and looking at her like he is so, so sorry. It’s not an expression she’s seen on him often, if ever, and then her eyes go to the little bundle in his arms.

He turns her out, let’s her see her. Suddenly she can’t believe that even just a minute ago she couldn’t correctly remember the smooth dark skin and chubby cheeks of her baby, the little crinkle of her closed eyelids, or that little tuft of curly black hair. That’s her baby, and when she looks back up at Mick, he sighs.

“I am sorry, Amaya.”

She barely has a second to register what’s happening when he draws the gun from his belt, there’s a flash of light, and then his face blurs into nothingness.


	21. The Insider

When Amaya wakes up a rush of panic briefly floods her system. She’s woken up like this once before; with cold metal underneath her and bright lights above her, and it was unquestionably the worst day of her life. For a moment she starts to fear she’s in a time loop, but then she remembers. Mick came to her safe house with… with Esi. He had her daughter with him, safe and sound, despite his threats against her. The thought is enough to make her nauseous, and the fresh memory of Esi is enough to make her want to cry.

She starts to sit up, more of her body’s accord than her minds’, and that’s when she spots Mick sitting on a stool on the other side of the glass.

She sends him a glare, pivoting to face him, but not standing up yet.

“I take it I’m on The Waverider?”

“Couldn’t leave ya in your safe house for the Time Masters to find ya.” He answers easily, to which she rolls her eyes.

“Let me guess,” she says, “You and your team gathered up all my captives and returned them to their proper places in the timeline.”

He nods, apparently they’re not going into detail about that, fine; next order of business.

“My daughter?” She asks, and finally he rises from his stool.

“With Kendra.” He answers, “You and me are gonna deal with one thing at a time.”

She rolls her eyes, “Ok,” she says, willing to humor him for now. “And what might the first thing be?”

He thinks for a minute, almost like he hasn’t worked that part out yet. Maybe he hasn’t. Maybe he expected she would argue with him, and that getting even this far would be a challenge.

“Savage?” She suggests; it’s as good a place as any. “You’re team will never beat him.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.” She returns quickly, completely confident in her conviction. “If you want Savage out of the way you’re going to have to take out the Time Masters first.”

She really should stop talking, under any other circumstances she would. But the Time Master’s know by now that she’s failed them, and they lost their patience with Rip Hunter and his recruits a long time ago.

If she’s going down, then she is taking them out with her if she can.

“Why?” Mick asks, his brow scrunched and arms folded. He doesn’t sound opposed to the idea, then again he had been the one to suggest it not but a few hours ago, just utterly confused as to why it would matter who they take out first.

“Because the Time Masters are more than they seem.”

* * *

 

“So you and Ray are all set?” Sara asks, she’s in Kendra’s room, sitting at the foot-end of the bed while the other woman is seated at the head and holding little Esi as she attempts to stand on the mattress.

“Yeah,” she answers, the word coming out with a bit of a laugh as the baby giggles and kicks her legs. “We talked, and there are plenty of people who don’t marry their soulmate and things turn out fine.”

Sara nods along, even though she does hear the waver of uncertainty in that.

“Carter’s dead.” She says, and Kendra looks at her with surprise. Not for the fact, of course, she is already painfully aware of it, but for the bluntness with which it has been stated.

“I just mean,” Sara begins again, a touch more gentle. “Even if he was your soulmate, he’s gone, and if we kill Savage your curse might be broken and he might not come back. But you deserve to be happy. Does Ray make you happy?”

“So happy.” Kendra practically yearns, and then when Esi gives a particularly hard kick of her legs she pauses to giggle and make proud face at her. “I love everything about him.” She continues, talking through a ridiculously large grin and bouncing the baby.

“See?” Sara says, with a slight grin of her own at the baby’s antics. “You deserve that.”

“I guess, but I do want to take our time planning the wedding. Figure out life after all this first.”

Sara nods, and Kendra continues to make more happy faces at Esi, bouncing her lightly up and down while her chubby little legs try to bear weight but to no avail.

Sara keeps giggling at the sight, waving happily when Esi takes notice and cranes her neck to look at her. She laughs harder, twisting in Kendra’s grip with excitement until Kendra finally just hands her over. Taking her is easy enough; she still remembers a decent amount of baby care from her summers as a sitter. She continues what Kendra had been doing, cooing and bouncing Esi up and down, until finally the baby tires and flops into her for a break.

“Oof!” She laughs, hugging Esi close. “Is that it?” She asks through a laugh, “Are you finally tired?”

There’s no answer, of course, but Esi doesn’t move so she leans back against the wall; may as well get comfortable.

“What about you and Snart?” Kendra asks after a minute, a bit hesitantly. “ Any idea what you’re doing after all this?”

Sara thinks on it, giving a little half-shrug while still being mindful of the baby getting cozy on her shoulder.

“We haven’t talked about it.”

Truthfully, she hasn’t even thought about it. She and Leonard are just barely a proper couple, and with everything that that’s been going on she has hardly had time to consider what she might do with herself after the mission. Coming on this mission, it was more or a less a distraction from trying to figure out what she’s supposed to do with herself now that she’s back in the land of the living. Leonard, well, having him is one piece to that. But everything else…

“Maybe we’ll go to Central City.” She throws out, mostly to placate Kendra. “There’s too much of my past in Star, I wouldn’t mind going somewhere else.”

Kendra nods, understanding.

“Well…” She says, an amused little grin etching onto her face when she does. “Wherever you end up, make sure you keep me in the loop. I’ll need to know where to send your invitation to the wedding.”

She smirks, the idea of doing something as normal as going to a wedding some day soon, even if it is a wedding for two superheroes, is almost too surreal for her; it’s been a long time since she did anything normal.

As if on cue, that is exactly when Gideon comes over the speakers

“Captain Hunter is requesting everyone’s presence on the bridge.”

Speaking of the non-normal.

“Well,” she huffs, sitting up and passing the now sleeping Esi to Kendra, who has already gotten to her feet. “Time to go psycho hunting.”

 

* * *

 

Amaya really doesn’t know what to expect when it comes to meeting the crew of The Waverider. She isn’t 100% confidant in the idea that they even know she’s here. Mick, while he has always been a follower more so than a leader in the time she’s known him, has also always operated with some agenda of his own tucked away in his back pocket. She’s sure he must have needed his friends’ help returning all her hostages, or at the very least did it himself and told them so they could keep peace of mind. Then again, maybe he let them suffer.

Rip Hunter, at least, doesn’t appear surprised she’s here on the ship but more that she’s out of the brig, asking Mick if he has completely lost his mind and what not. Mick responds by demanding a team meeting be called, and after a moment of sputtering and glaring the captain complies and has the ship’s AI unit hail the rest of the team.

The firsts to walk in is two men: one a little older than herself with thick black hair, and the other old enough to be her father. Raymond Palmer and Martin Stein. They both appear rather perplexed by her presence, as well as guarded, but they don’t voice anything. The next arrival is a younger man, younger than her it appears. Jefferson Jackson. The next is a man whose file she has read more than once, in addition to hearing all of Mick’s stories: Leonard Snart. She can’t help but to curl her fists at her sides. Mick has told her plenty about him and how he is the one who set her on the path to the Time Masters in the first place, inadvertently by the sound of it, but still.

There is something complicated in his eyes when they meet hers, and she supposes the same might be true on her end. There is hate for him in her veins of course, but she is grateful he brought Mick to her. If anything good came out of what he’s done, any tiny thing, she supposes it’s that. Even if things are a bit complicated between them at the moment.

In any case, she doesn’t have time to dwell on him. The final two members of the crew arrive in that moment. Two women. One blonde and looking at her defensively from the moment she sees her: Sara Lance. The other is… the other is carrying her daughter.

The woman, Kendra, who is at the center of this whole debacle, at least as far as the issue with Savage is concerned, is right there and carrying Esi.

She’s looking at her with a look possibly more complicated than Snart’s. Of the many, many emotions hidden inside of it Amaya picks out uncertainty, relief, fear, pity… the list could really go on and on.

She’s still thinking about the myriad of feelings in the other woman’s eyes when she sees her glance past her and at Mick. She doesn’t pay much attention to the silent exchange, not until Kendra starts coming forward and the next thing Amaya knows she’s standing right in front of her, and gently pressing Esi into her arms.

She nearly fumbles when taking her baby, awkwardly wrapping her arms around the little figure. Kendra doesn’t back off until there is no chance of her dropping her, at least, hopefully not.

In truth she doesn’t actually notice Kendra back off. She is far too distracted by the sudden, familiar, warm weight in her arms. The baby looks so peaceful, not woken by the less-than-smooth transfer but instead only stirred enough to adjust herself, which she does by snuggling her face into Amaya’s chest.

Amaya blinks down at her daughter, the small action suddenly bringing her back lifetimes. To sitting in her home in Zambesi with this very baby cuddled up on her and nursing until her little stomach was full.

She can’t do that anymore. It’s been far too long, but for Esi it’s only been a day, which means she’ll still try.

That, yeah… That’s going to be a stab to the heart later.

But for now Mick is nudging her, encouraging her to speak up, because they have a lot to do if they even want to live to see later.

Everyone is staring at her; she’s pretty sure Mick has said something about her having intel to share but she can’t be positive. In any case, she hugs Esi a little closer to herself as a means of grounding her mind, and looks out at the group.

“I don’t know everything.” She starts, figuring it might be in her own best interest to lead off with that. “But, I do know you can’t take Vandal Savage out if you don’t take out the Time Masters first.”

“Take out the Time Masters?” Hunter interrupts; she’s always heard he’s an impatient one. But he doesn’t seem wholly opposed to the idea, only a little unsure about it.

“Yes.” She says, “The Time Masters have more power than they let on.”

She looks to the rest of the team then, specifically the two members of Firestorm.

“Do you remember when I froze you in time, in Star City?”

“How could I forget?” Jefferson snorts, while his older half appears equally irritated by the memory.

“Well,” she starts again, “Those powers came from when I was being used as a guinea pig for the Time Masters’ experiments.”

She notices Mick bristle out of the corner of her eye, not that she blames him. He was never subjected to the particular experiments that she was, the Time Masters had different plans for him, but his tortures were every bit as unspeakable.

“They submerged me in a wellspring that contains the energy of a partially ruptured supernova. The wellspring, from what I understand, is like a portal into all of time. Every moment that ever has and ever will exist is there in one place.”

“So, like the temporal zone?” Raymond interrupts, but she shakes her head.

“Not quite.” She says, “A little like it, but on a much smaller scale. Think…” She trails off, digging back through her mind for a mental picture, trying to find the best way to describe it.

“Think of the temporal zone as kind of like a time-highway.” She eventually says. “You can get to any moment, but you have to fly there with a ship. Yes, everything exists within it, but at different points. The wellspring is more like a time ring. Everything that exists within the temporal zone exists within it, and it all exists at once.”

“So…” Professor Stein is the one to jump in this time, gears visibly turning in his mind. “The wellspring, essentially, is an entity that exists within one moment in time, and yet every other moment exists within it?”

She nods, and his face lights up.

“Fascinating!”

“Yes, indeed.” Hunter more or less grumbles, “However, I am failing to see your logic for taking out the Time Masters.”

She can hear the growl rumble in Mick’s chest just behind her, but she ignores it. She’s getting to the point, but it is important everyone understand the severity of this.

“The Time Masters have a device built on top of the wellspring, they call it The Oculus. They somehow have figured out how to use The Oculus to harness the energy of the wellspring and bend it to their will. I.E.-”

“They’ve been controlling time.” Stein interrupts, and she nods.

“I don’t know how much.” She warns, a touch regretfully, and then she looks to Hunter who, well, he doesn’t look pleased. “But given their refusal to remove Savage from power, I think it would be safe to assume-”

“They’re the ones who put him there.” The Captain finishes for her, and she nods.

It is an incredibly, immeasurably, tense few seconds on the bridge before someone finally does something.

And that something is Hunter turning tail and storming off.


	22. A Moment in Time

After Rip storms off the rest of the team is left on the bridge, standing in a very tense circle.

“You said the Time Masters could use this Oculus thing to control time.” Leonard finally speaks up. With each moment that has passed that notion has been bothering him more and more. “To what extent?”

“I’m not sure.” Amaya answers him, “They once told me free will is an illusion, they were trying to get me to comply with orders, but if it’s true…”

“Then they may have been controlling us our whole lives.” Stein interjects, and if that isn’t enough to leave a bitter taste in ones mouth Leonard doesn’t know what is.

“How do we know they’re not controlling us right now?” Raymond asks, and it is a valid point.

“We don’t.” Amaya admits, regret and sorrow on her face. “But, it isn’t likely. Because the temporal zone exists in limbo it’s harder for the Time Masters to control people inside of it, because it’s harder to find them.”

“Which means if we are planning to take them out, this is the place to hash that out.” Leonard drawls out, and Amaya nods.

“Here or the Vanishing Point.”

He notices Mick stiffen at that, and the others must take notice too, because Stein steps forward.

“Am I correct to assume that is the location where the Time Masters tortured the two of you?”

The two in question look to each other, a silent communication happening between them that Leonard almost wants to snort at.

“It’s the last moment in time.” Mick eventually supplies, after an apparent agreement has been reached. “It’s frozen, so…” he looks down to Amaya. “They can’t control us there?”

“If they could we wouldn’t have gone through half of what we did.”

There’s a story there, one that Leonard is fairly certain he is never going to hear in full. However, he is strangely ok with that. It’s their story, and he has to stop himself from smiling.

“So we go there.” Raymond suggest, altruistic as ever. “We destroy this Oculus and then we take down Savage.”

“I hardly think it’s going to be that simple.” Leonard objects, and at the suspicious glances from Sara and Mick he relents, just a little bit. “Still… Will be worth it if we pull it off.”

“Save free will? Yeah, it’ll be worth it.” Jax agrees, with his unique brand of enthusiasm that never quite seems to grow annoying. The kid’s got heart, and he’s not as willfully blind to hardship as Raymond, not even close.

“Besides,” Sara finally puts in, “Our other option is dying, so why not go out with a bang?”

Leonard enjoys the sentiment, really, but at the same time they are actually agreeing to do this, so he hopes they don’t follow it too closely.

 

* * *

 

Sara ends up as the one with the privilege of tracking down Rip after the team meeting. Lucky her. Anyway, he’s easy enough to find. He’s hold up in his room, and after nearly fifteen minutes of incessantly knocking on his door he finally lets her inside, or at the very least Gideon does.

The room is trashed; clearly he came in here and took his renewed anger with the Time Masters out on his nightstand, poor thing. He doesn’t look much better than the now splintered pile of wood. The skin of his face is red and blotchy, and there is a half drained bottle of scotch perched on the edge of the desk, a small puddle of its contents pooled around it.

“We had Gideon set a course for the Vanishing Point.” She tells him, might as well get straight to the point. He looks up at her from his wallowing, a pained look of grateful uncertainty on his face.

“The Vanishing Point?” He nearly gasps, “Do you lot have _any_ idea how dangerous taking on the Time Masters is going to be?”

She pretends to consider it for a moment.

“A little,” she answers with a smirk. “But we did sign on to this mission to save the free world, now it’s just on a bigger scale.”

Rip scoffs, “Well, by the looks of things, you all may have very well only signed onto this mission because it was the Time Masters will.”

Yeah that… That isn’t something Sara wants to dwell on. She doubts the Time Masters have been pulling strings on her like a puppet her whole life, but to know they could have engineered any part of it…

The Gambit, The Amazo, The League, her death, Leonard…

Yeah, she doesn’t want to think about it.

“Well then, considering how horribly this mission has gone, all the more reason to kick their assess.”

* * *

 

They’re waiting for Sara to come back with Rip so they can make a plan. Most of the teams still on the bridge, those who aren’t haven’t gone far, supposedly, Mick doesn’t actually know, he’s still here.

So is Amaya.

She’s sat herself in a jump seat, Esi still sleeping in her arms. She’ll probably wake up soon, but not yet. She looks so peaceful when he looks over Amaya’s shoulder at her, snuggled up right where she belongs.

“Thank you.” Amaya says as he lowers himself into the seat next to her, and she tears her gaze away from her daughter to look at him. “For bringing her back to me.”

“Course.” He says with a shrug, “After everything… It’s the least I could do.”

She shakes her head, a small and knowing smile on her face.

“You were never going to kill her, were you?”

Anyone else he would lie and say of course he was, he doesn’t have a heart. But she knows him too well.

Still, he at least tries to keep an air of indifference.

“When would I have done it?” He asks, leaning back in his seat. “Kid’s too cute when she’s asleep, and when she’s awake, well you _know_ I can’t say no to those eyes.”

She snorts, looks back to Esi, and then a look of guilt crosses her face.

“You’re better than I am.” She says lowly, “When I had your mom…”  
She doesn’t finish; she doesn’t need to. Still, it doesn’t sting much. If she’d killed his mom it would’ve meant she would live to see another day, and besides, he checked the timeline, she took her from literally the day before the fire; it ain’t like the woman had much to live for.

“Don’t worry about it.” He says, “Rather have you two anyway.”

She doesn’t appear completely reassured by that, but besides the guilt there’s something else in her expression.

“It’s been so long.” She says quietly, almost to herself. “I’ve done so many horrible things, I don’t even know if I can be a mother anymore.”

Worry, that’s the something else. Worry and fear. She directs that expression onto Esi and so he gets up from his chair, moves and crouches in front of her.

“You can.” He tells her seriously, “I know you.”

“You know what I’ve done.” She reminds him, doubt in her voice as well as her eyes.

“Yeah I do.” He agrees, “I know you’ve kept my ass alive throughout centuries. I know you’ve given yourself up so she could be safe. I know you haven’t put her down in half an hour. You’re gonna be fine.”

She looks doubtful, still, but maybe just a little assured, or maybe that’s just his hope. In any case they can’t keep talking about it, because that’s when Sara finally comes back with their Captain and anyone else who’d left the bridge, and it’s time to start planning.

 

* * *

 

The plan, surprise, surprise, is everything Leonard hates in a plan.

The stakes are huge, the actual plan is half-baked at best, and it’s all riding on a boatload of assumptions. If it works, it will truly be a miracle.

They can’t simply jump to the Vanishing Point because of some time stream logic or whatever. You can jump out of it, around inside of it, but not into it. So they have to fly there the long way, which is fine, gives them more time to hopefully come up with a better plan.

Amaya doesn’t know anything about how The Oculus actually works, but their best guess is it must be somewhat like a computer and energy core combined into one, so pulling a few wires should be enough to blow it, the trick is going to be blowing it without blowing themselves in the process.

Since, again, they can’t jump right into the Vanishing Point, and they will certainly be noticed flying right into it, they’re going to embrace that target. They don’t need the whole team to take out The Oculus, so a few of them are taking the jump ship and sneaking around to the Oculus chamber while the Waverider and rest of the team distract the Time Masters.

Of those going in the jump ship is Amaya, since she’s the only one of them who’s so much as seen the thing before. Raymond, for his tech knowledge, and himself and Mick, both for their delicate touch with fragile objects and to lie down cover fire in the highly likely event they get caught.

“One problem.” Mick says after they’ve gone over everything, to which Leonard looks skeptical.

“One?” He asks, and his partner gives him a looks that says he is well aware this plan sucks, but it is all they’ve got, so he keeps going with this “one” problem.

“Time Masters will force their way onto The Waverider, we can’t take ‘em out if they’re on the ship.”

“We don’t need to kill every individual Time Master in order for this to work, we just need to destroy The Oculus.” Rip reminds them all, “And you four,” he says, nodding around to their little destruction crew, “Will have the jump ship.”

“Which means the rest of us can time jump away with the Time Masters on board.” Stein supplies and Rip nods.

“That’s going to be one hell of a tip off.” Leonard says, and the look Rip gives him is one of agreement, and nothing makes him quite so uncomfortable as being in agreement with Hunter.

“Which is why, Mr. Snart, I am trusting one of you to radio us through the comms once you are inside The Oculus chamber.”

He can accept that, not easily, but he can still accept it.

“Any other questions?” Rip asks, looking around at the group. “We should arrive at the Vanishing Point within two hours.”

 

* * *

 

Two hours, Sara decides, is not enough time, and yet also entirely to much time.

Her and Leonard give it a shot, in the privacy of her room with a deck of cards between them, but they can’t seem to come up with a better plan. So they keep on playing gin to distract themselves, but sooner or later they have to talk about it.

“What do we think of the plan?” Leonard asks, so apparently they’re going with sooner.

“Think it sounds a lot easier than it will be.” She answers, putting down a card.

“Well that’s a given.” He almost grumbles, partially distracted as he looks through his own cards.

She’s looking at him over the edge of her hand, and she can tell by the conflicted look on his face that either he has a really shitty hand and is trying to fool her, or he’s concerned about more than winning their game.

“Who do you think is going to have the harder job?” She asks, and he looks up at her, his expression considering, and then he looks back to his cards.

“Not sure…” He drawls, finally selecting a card and putting it down. “On one hand we have team Time Masters, on the other team bomb.”

She’s just won, with that move of his, and so he lays down his cards and looks her in the eye.

“Try not to die, ok?”

She nods, and lays down her own hand.

“You too.”

He nods too, and so they start another game and then, before she knows it, two hours have passed and it’s time for them to get into their respective positions. They put the cards down in the center of the mattress with an uncertain look exchanged between them.

“We’ll finish later.” She promises, she has to say it, she feels like not saying it would just be a jinx.

“Later.” He echoes, and they get up from the bed and head their separate ways.

 

* * *

 

Leonard considers, in fact he has to stop himself, giving Sara a kiss before they leave her room. But he’s never been much of the sentimental type, and frankly he doesn’t want to think about it possibly being their last kiss.

She’ll be fine. She’ll have half the team with her; the super powered half.

When he arrives at the loading bay for the jump ship Raymond is already there and suited up, and coming up right behind him is Mick, Amaya, and Esi cocooned closely to her mother’s front with the aid of a cloth wrap.

“You’re bringing the baby?” He asks, not that he is in any position to judge anyone’s parenting, but this hardly seems like a baby friendly assignment.

“It’s that or leave her on a ship about to be invaded by people who have threatened her a hundred times over.”

Fair enough. He knows the entire team would die themselves before letting the Time Masters get Esi, but with the risks they’re taking on, yeah, fair enough.

They all file into the jump ship and strap in, all except for Amaya who can’t safely get the seatbelt around Esi, but she keeps one hand gripped firmly to the edge of her seat and taking off in this isn’t anywhere near as jarring as a time jump; especially not with Mick flying.

They know the plan; get far enough away and wait to be radioed by Sara saying the Waverider is being boarded, and when that transmission comes through Leonard confirms their position while Mick sets their course for the far side of the Vanishing Point.

“This place is huge.” Raymond exclaims in awe as they approach, and Leonard had to agree with him.

The Vanishing Point is like an entire city floating in the middle of space, which sets about an uneasy feeling in his stomach.

“We’re counting on everyone in this place to be distracted by one ship?” He asks, giving his anxiety a voice.

“Just long enough for us to get in.” Mick answers, though Len isn’t oblivious to the sudden speed that their ship picks up.

“Don’t worry, with the amount of resources the Time Masters have devoted to stopping your team, the news that Hunter has surrendered will get everyone to look up.”

Ok, Leonard does see Amaya’s logic, he even agrees with it on some level.

He just hopes it’s enough.

* * *

 

The screen goes black; they’ve just been warned that they should prepare to be boarded. Oh they are prepared, or at least, Sara hopes they are.

Rip had made the announcement that they are here for a meeting with the Time Council, to plead a case against Vandal Savage.

“Do you think he bought it?” Jax asks

“With the amount of times I’ve made the very same request?” Rip asks in return, “Undoubtedly.”

Well, that’s good at least.

It isn’t even a minute later that they hear the sound of the hatch door opening and closing, alerting them that they are no longer alone.

“You guys are up.” Sara says, pressing her finger to her comm.

“Got it, on our way in.” Leonard’s voice returns, and before she has time to worry about anything that could potentially go wrong with his crew her attention is yanked to the sound of nearing footsteps falling heavy on the metal floor, and then there are guards on the bridge.

They look like the real deal, like the guards from some of the highest security areas she’s ever invaded for The League, wearing thick bullet proof vests and bulky helmets with dark visors over their faces; and yet they’re led by a man in a robe.

“Time Master Druce.” Rip greets the man, an obvious snarl to his voice.

That puts Sara on edge, the last thing they need is for Rip to give the Time Masters a reason to be suspicious, but maybe they’ll just chalk it up to his anger at them for not condemning Savage.

“Captain Hunter.” Druce replies with an air of almost smugness to his voice. “I didn’t expect to be seeing you so soon.”

“Well perhaps you lost track of time.” Rip suggests, “Anyway, Gideon, would you close the hatch please?”

There’s no answer from the AI, and Sara feels her heart freeze in her chest.

“Gideon?” Rip tries again, but the shit-eating grin is already stretched across Druce’s face.

“Don’t bother,” he gloats “You’re ship was disabled as soon as we attached the boarding ramp.”

Rip pales, Stein does too, and maybe she doe as well.

“Now,” Druce says as his guards approach each of them, “Come quietly, and we can all have a nice little chat.”

 

* * *

 

Getting into The Oculus chamber is minimally complicated, by some small miracle. They only run into two guards who are easy enough to take out, but with each second that passes with Raymond studying the device Leonard know it’s another second they can’t afford to waste.

“Can you blow it or not?” Mick finally growls, his patience growing thin as well.

“I think so, give me a minute.”

That’s when Leonard sees the first guard rounding the corner.

He fires a blast out of his cold gun and the guard, obviously shocked he was spotted, gets frozen in his spot.

“Might not have a minute.” He drawls, and sure enough within the next thirty seconds reinforcements are called and he and Mick are shooting guards and armed Time Masters left and right, doing their damndest to avoid the fire opened on them and keep Amaya and Raymond covered while they pour over The Oculus.

“Uh-oh.” He finally hears Raymond say.

“What’s uh-oh?” He sneers,

“Haircut if you broke it-”

“I didn’t break it.” Ray cuts Mick off, incredulous. “There’s a failsafe.”

“So disable it.” Mick demands, like it’s going to be that easy.

“I can’t.” Raymond snaps, audibly annoyed by the insinuation. “There’s a switch, someone has to be holding it down or else it will keep this thing from blowing.”

Leonard looks over his shoulder to Mick, and even through both their goggles he can tell what his partner is thinking by the way his forehead creases, and the next thing he knows Mick is turning around to see Raymond, arm deep The Oculus, telling them it’s ok and they can go, and then Mick is moving.

And Leonard, well, he’s moving to.

Mick socks Raymond right in the temple, knocks him out cold, but before he can take is place Leonard grabs him by the shoulders and shoves his way past him, stuffing his own arm into the device and jamming down the handle.

“What are you doing?” Mick demands, bewildered, as he tries to stop stumbling and start firing again.

“I left you behind once Mick!” He answers, having to shout over the increasing fire all around them, not to mention the baby screaming. “I’m not doing it again!”

“I’ll knock you out too you bast-”

“Mick no!” Amaya is the one to stop him, pulling on the arm he is already winding up. He looks shaken when he looks to her, not that Leonard really has time to pay attention. He still listens, but his eyes are too busy taking aim while he uses his other hand to fire ice blasts on that aim.

“Mick, listen to me!” Amaya practically sneers through her teeth. “Take Ray-”

“No!”

“Mick!” She snaps, and then from the corner of his eye he sees her reach into the sling she’s been carrying her baby in, pulling her out gently and swiftly as she can.

“I have a plan.” She continues, “Take Ray and Esi, get to the jump ship, fly away, and the _second_ you see the explosion, turn back and fly back in.”

“What?” Mick demands.

“Just trust me!” Amaya pleads, and frankly Leonard isn’t sure _he_ trusts her. But Mick, after too long a moment of consideration than they can afford, loads Raymond onto his shoulders in a fireman’s carry and then somehow gets Esi in his arms, Amaya taking his gun from him as a trade.

Leonard can’t see his face, not from this angle, but he can see Amaya’s, and she looks _scared._

“Turn right back.” She makes him promise, and if he says anything Leonard doesn’t hear it, but he probably wasn’t meant to because the next thing he sees is Mick lean down to the best of his ability given his current predicament, and give her a chaste kiss.

He stays a few seconds longer, and much as Leonard hates to do it the fire on them is getting heavier, and he can feel the charge building in The Oculus.

“Might want to get out now, Mick. Before this whole place goes sky high!”

The wild-eye look Mick gives him is one of a man who is very, very worried, and wishes he could forget he and Amaya aren’t alone.

But he goes anyway, races past the two of them and out of the chamber, and as Leonard keeps firing at the guards he looks to Amaya.

“You have a plan?” He shouts, because frankly he isn’t sure he believes her.

But, despite the anxiety riddled look on her face, she nods.

“I do.”

“Will it work?”

That is when the panic flashes through her eyes.

“I hope.”

Great.

He can still feel the charge building in the device, but it won’t be long now. The handle is growing hotter by the second beneath his fingers. Between the two of them they’ve got nearly all the guards taken out my the time his hand feels like it’s on fire, a ball of white energy visible and building in the core of The Oculus.

“Leonard?”

“Yeah?” He asks, completely convinced she is about to tell him she doesn’t actually have a plan and he really should’ve given Sara that goodbye kiss.

“Thank you for stopping Mick.” She says with a gulp, and then she looks him dead in the eye with quite possibly the most serious expression he has ever seen on a person.

“Make sure he takes care of Esi for me.”

_What?_

He tries to voice the question, but he can’t. His mouth won’t move, he can’t even blink, nothing. The Oculus is cracked to pieces, the light exploded out of it, and his hand feels numb. He should be dead by now, they should both be dead by now, but they’re not. Nothing is happening. Nothing is moving. It’s like even within a frozen point in time, time is… frozen.

_Oh._

That’s finally when he notices her hands, her fingers and wrists bent at odd angles, and her brow furrowed tight in concentration.

She’s frozen time around him, halted the explosion, but as he starts to feel the numb turn to white hot pain again, he knows she can’t hold it. Time is slipping; she may have only bought them a few extra seconds.

Then he feels hands under his arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter left to go!


	23. You Are My Destiny

“Turn right back.” Her voice is barely a whisper when she gives him that bat-shit insane order, but they don’t exactly have time to argue about it, and if there’s one person in this room Mick trusts, it’s her.

He can’t nod, not with how carefully Haircut is balanced on his shoulders, and Esi is screaming pressed against his chest, but he leans in quick and manages a kiss for her anyway.

He has to pull away, if not before he loses his balance than before he keeps kissing her and loses whatever time he has to get out. There’s so much he wants to say to her. He wants to ask what this plan is, if it’ll work, if there’s any way it can work that involves her running out with him, if he can stay instead of her. He wants to tell her he’s sorry she ever got mixed up in any of this, even if it _was_ all Snart’s fault…

“Might want to get out now, Mick.” Speak of the devil, “Before this whole place goes sky high.”

Man, he really hates when Snart is right.

He knows he looks a little caught off guard when he staggers his way around, and then he gets his bearing and with the two of them covering him he races out to the jump ship, which he is amazed hasn’t been destroyed.

He lets Ray tumble off over his head and land across the seats, as for what to do with Esi, that’s a little bit more of a question.

He doesn’t really have time to think about it, so about two or three bad ideas run through his mind and then he decides to go with the best of them. He knocks Ray’s feet to the side, consequently knocking Ray to the floor, and sits her in the seat and straps the belt in tight as it will go.

“Alright, stay put kid.” He instructs, and then gets himself into the pilot’s seat.

He doesn’t bother strapping in. He just slams on the gas and flies them away fast as he can.

He doesn’t pull far out of the orbit of the Vanishing Point, just far enough, and when he sees the bursts of white light coming out from where he just left he jerks the wheel hard to the left, but not too hard that he’s actually worried Esi will go flying.

He isn’t going to lie, there’s a moment flying back in that he wonders if this is nuts. It’s impossible not to hear the baby crying, and much as it pains him he knows Amaya, he knows she’ll put Esi above herself. He’s kind of thinking she already did and just told him to fly back to get him gone, and that’s enough to send a pain through his chest. But still, maybe he should just get out of dodge with Esi; maybe she and Snart are already dead.

He doesn’t listen to that reasoning. He keeps flying in, and when he gets there…

Shit.

Everything in there is stopped, frozen right in the moment, except Amaya. She’s standing perfectly still, but not frozen. Her eyes are still moving, looking up at the jump ship and he can’t see her expression all that great from here, but something tells him he doesn’t want to.

He moves quick getting up from the pilot’s seat, ducking around to the back and hauling Ray up into a sitting position.

“Wake up!” He shouts, slapping the unconscious scientist across the face. It rouses him a little bit, so he does it again, then one more time.

“Ah!” Ray finally, finally cries out. “What-?”

“No time.” Mick cuts him off, practically yanking him to his feet. “Fly down there, and get ‘em out!

Ray splutters some kind of question that he doesn’t really pay attention to. He’s focused more on getting the hatch open and shoving him out.

He watches, his breath held, as Ray flies down in that fancy suit of his and for a moment Esi’s cries fall on deaf ears. He sees Ray grabbing Snart under the arms, and he thinks he sees the hesitation.

Ray can’t get them both.

He can get Snart, but even if he could carry Amaya he can’t get her cause, technically, she’s in a different time. It’s hard, moving through frozen time, and even if Ray could get through to the other side of her time block it would be too late. It would negate what she’s doing; explosion would go off and they’d all be dead.

He’s watching her, as Ray pulls out of there, and he knows he isn’t imagining the sorrowful look in her eye.

She knows what she’s doing.

He barely has time to register it before things are moving way too fast. All at once Ray’s crashing back into the ship with Snart and he has to move cause she can only hold off the explosion for so long and they have to get out. He scrambles for the controls and punches them hard as he can, to get them as far away as possible.

Then, even when he’s sure they’re out of danger, he keeps going.

He flies them through the temporal zone, and at some point the back of his mind becomes aware that Esi’s finally shut up but he doesn’t worry too much about it. He hasn’t taken many sharp turns, just been flying straight, and at one point he thought he heard a buckle so one of the two in the back must have her.

“Mick.”

Yeah, one of ‘em’s got her.

Snart’s standing beside him, Esi cradled to his chest, and the disturbing sight of tears in his eyes.

He grunts, what else can he say?

“How long’s it take for that ache to start?”

Snart blinks at him when he looks at him, dumbfounded. He ain’t sure why, maybe because he’s accepting it so quick. What else is he supposed to do?

“Couple seconds, I think?” He says, and Mick hums, thinking about it. He’s not sure how soon after Amaya died last time that his mark started hurting, he didn’t know her then, but when full minutes have gone by and he still doesn’t feel the ache he almost dares to start hoping. But, before he can get that far, he pulls at his collar just to look at his mark, which really makes no sense because the mark isn’t supposed to change at all.

Still, good thing he looked.

“My marks gone.” He says, and judging by the look of sheer disbelief on Snart’s face, he’s guessing that’s not normal.

Snart looks down at himself, as if to check his mark, but Esi’s kind of in the way and even if she weren’t, well, his mark is somewhere he doesn’t really like exposing.

“Raymond.” He almost asks, not a bark, which is odd for him. “Let me see your mark.”

Mick can only imagine the look that get’s, but Haircut’s mark is in a lot more visible of a place. Top of his eyelids are totally grey, it really freaked Mick out at first.

But, judging by the way he can hear Snart’s breath hitching, he’s guessing it’s even freakier now.

“Time Masters were controlling everything.” He finds himself saying; barely a second after the thought has come into his mind. “We took ‘em out, brought free will back, marks are gone.”

He doesn’t dare turn and look at Snart, but he can tell he’s processing. He is too, a lot, then when he feels like maybe they are both owed a consolation, however small…

“I knew how Amaya’s powers worked.” He says, “She could freeze things, speed things up, I think the _idea_ was her to be able to move things but… she never got that far. Sounds like the Oculus was her powers on a bigger scale. Time Master’s could move us, set things up, but I don’t think they could make us feel.”

This time, he does chance a glance over at Snart, and his old friend doesn’t exactly look assured but… maybe a little less hurt than he’d expect.

No time to dwell on it, however, cause they’ve made it back to the ship.

 

* * *

 

Sara exhales heavily as she yanks her knife out of the guard’s shoulder blades, slick blood flying off it in little drops.

“Well,” she says, looking around and seeing the rest of the group reconvening. “That was fun.”

“Fun?” Stein asks, incredulous. “We killed an entire squadron of guards and a Time Master!”

“Don’t worry Martin.” Rip grumbles, “These people didn’t have any family to miss them, they all made quite sure of that.”

There is more than enough bitterness and resentment in that statement, but Sara thinks he’s earned it. The lights come back on then, and Jax comes back to the bloody mess that is the bridge.

“Ok, ship’s back online.” He announces, and then his eyes widen as he takes in the array of bodies littering the floor. “And I’d say we’re-”

“Jax.” Kendra interrupts him, a look of worry on her face that has Sara curious. “What happened to your mark?”

Jax furrows his brow and looks, but as soon as Kendra’s said it Sara sees it too, or rather, the lack of it.

His mark, a long wavy line along his right forearm that Sara has come to know as easily as his tattoos, is gone. On impulse she looks at her own wrist, and when she is met with blank skin her heart skips a beat.

If it weren’t for Jax’s mark disappearing she might fear the worse, because mark’s aren’t supposed to disappear, _ever._ But, the more she thinks about it, the sooner she realizes, that if the Time Masters truly have had control over everything, then they could easily have been behind marks, using them as another string to pull their victims by.

The thought is enough to turn her stomach.

It isn’t much later, only a few minutes in fact, that Gideon announces the jump ship’s return to it’s designated loading bay, and then Sara is practically running through the halls of the ship. She has to know, even if they have all determined that the marks vanishing is happening to everyone and a direct result of their victory, she has to know for sure.

Which is why, when that hatch door opens and Leonard is the first to step out, if feels as though a weight has been lifted from her chest.

Even if it is, after seeing his long and broken face, quickly replaced by a new weight.

She’s about to ask what went wrong, but Ray follows him out and behind him is Mick holding Esi, and that’s it.

All of their faces show the heartbreak, but none more so than Mick’s.

“Where is Ms. Jiwe?” Stein asks, having appeared behind her at some point, but the answer is clear as day on all their faces.

“Mick.” She says, but the look he gives her is a warning; he doesn’t want her pity.

Leonard, sensing the imminent need for a topic shift, turns his attention to her.

“We weren’t sure you guys would be in the temporal zone.”

She nods; she understands the question in that.

“Druce disabled our systems, we couldn’t jump.” There’s a flicker of worry in his eyebrows as they rise, so of course she is quick to reassure him.

“Don’t worry,” she says, “It’s all fixed now, but we are going to have to make a stop to dump some bodies.”

 

* * *

 

They make that stop, and then they make a couple more in order to kill Savage once and for all.

Mick knows he should’ve done something with Esi before that, but he just couldn’t help himself. Snart told him what Amaya asked, and for the record he thinks she must of lost her mind in those last few seconds, but if she really wants him looking out for Esi then, well, least he didn’t get her killed on the mission.

After it’s all said and done Hunter takes them back to 2016, but maybe not forever. With the Time Masters gone history needs protecting, and Rip thinks their little team of misfits are the only people willing to do it, since they’re the only people who know about it.

He’s not wrong, but it’s a big decision. Another thing that’s a big decision? Esi.

Right now he’s in one of his and Snart’s safe houses, the one he walked in on Snart and Sara in, all that time ago. It’s not remotely baby-proof, he’s not sure he would even have the slightest idea how to go about that, and the ship would be less baby proof…

He really has no idea what he’s doing.

“You know.” Snart drawls, coming up behind him. Right now he’s on the couch, Esi propped in the corner and entertaining herself with, well, her foot. “You could take her back to 1945, find someone in the village to take her.”

“Like who?” He snorts, “Amaya’s mom was older, probably won’t live past 1950. Besides, she said it herself, she wanted me to take care of the kid.”

He knows Snart is trying to come up with another suggestion. A way to talk him out of this, he almost wishes he could. But he can’t just cast the kid aside. She’s all he’s got left of Amaya.

 

* * *

 

“So Mick’s serious about keeping Esi?” Sara asks that night. She’d come by later, after visiting with her mom and calling Star City to check in with her sister, father, and everyone else.

Everyone is good, thankfully, Leonard doesn’t think he could take it if they came back to find anything went wrong here.

The two of them are sitting on the couch mow, their hands intertwined and swinging idly between them.

“Looks like it.” He huffs, and the sidelong glance Sara is giving him… she knows he has more thoughts on the matter than that.

“I hope he can handle it.” He admits, “But people like me and him? Not exactly cut out for fatherhood.”

She nods, her mouth pressed into a firm line as she pulled their joined hands into her lap and starts playing with his fingers; one of her favorite way to distract herself during any conversation.

“So, you’d never think about it then?” She asks, her head lolling back to look at him and when his eyes meet those oh-so-serious blue orbs… His throat goes dry.

He… Logically, he knows, or he thinks rather, that she is only being hypothetical. But, and his eyes flit briefly to her stomach of their own accord, as if he suddenly expects to find her starting to show with a baby that she is just now bringing up the topic of.

They’ve been careful, of course, but they have also been frequent with-

“Leonard?” She interrupts his thoughts, her eyebrow raised with inquisitive worry and an amused little grin starting to make itself known. “Oh my god,” she laughs, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

He doesn’t say anything; honestly he isn’t sure who is collecting themselves in the next few seconds that pass; him, or her with her laughter.

But, in either case, she is the one to speak next.

“No, don’t worry. I just meant someday, WAY down the line, if I even can.” There is a slight twinge of, well he isn’t sure what, and maybe she isn’t either; but it’s there at the end of her words all the same.

“Do you?” He asks, looking at her carefully.

“Maybe.” She answers, after a moment of consideration, and he can’t help but notice that she takes her free arm and slings it across her body. “Not yet. The bloodlust is under control but I don’t think I’m ready for something like that yet. But maybe someday, if you’d want to?”

He thinks about it a minute, now that he isn’t panicking, and for as much as he’s always sworn his life isn’t conducive to having children, which it definitely is not…

“I think I’d be up for it.” He says, and if he wasn’t sure he certainly is when he sees the happy little sparkle in Sara’s eyes. “Not tomorrow.” He adds quickly, to which she rolls her eyes. “But someday, if we decide to.”

She keeps her smile on her face as she leans into him, and kisses him, and yeah, he would definitely be ok with a mini-version of her running around someday.

 

* * *

 

Mick is in the spare room, Lisa’s room, whatever the room actually is, of the safe house that night. The room has a dresser, so he pulls out a drawer and pads it down for Esi to sleep in. Sara and Snart are next door, and thankfully not making any noise. He’s almost asleep himself, off to dream away all the shit he has to deal with, when suddenly he hears a pounding coming from the front door.

His brow furrows, who the hell would knock here? Landlord doesn’t usually come in the middle of the night, and he’s pretty sure the rent’s all paid up. Still, they have been away for awhile. Maybe Lisa forgot her key and is too tired to break in?

The sound of Esi grunting in her sleep is what finally gets him up, the last thing he needs right now is for her to get up because some drunken idiot has the wrong apartment.

He slips out of the room, finds Snart standing in the doorway of the other bedroom, and after an exchanged glance he keeps going for the front door.

He swings it open, determined to tell whoever’s there to screw off, but the command dies on his lips and it’s quickly replaced by Amaya’s kiss as she surges up against him.

He reciprocates it only on instinct, his hands grabbing awkwardly at her waist as he tries to process this. His first coherent thought is that he’s gone crazy, even as she feels solid and real under his hands and she falls back on her flat feet and looks up at him with sparkling eyes. It isn’t until he hears Sara curse somewhere behind him that he actually believes, or even just hopes, that she’s real.

“How?” He asks, his hands still on her waist, afraid of her vanishing if he lets her go.

She looks a little worse for wear. Her hair is a mess, her Pilgrim leathers are a little torn, and she’s panting like she just ran a mile all the way here.

Maybe she did.

“I jumped.” She answers, not that it actually explains anything at all. “Into the Wellspring.” She clarifies, “Once you guys were out. I jumped.”

He just stares at her, processing that.

“How… How’d you end up here?”

She takes a breath, trying to get herself under control.

“When the Time Masters would torture me by putting me in there, I would see things.” She starts, “I would think about Esi, and the Wellspring would show me her throughout moments in time. It would work with you, my mother, and the more I went in, the easier it was to control. So I thought of this place you told me about, in this time-”

“Did you know it would work?” He interrupts, now thinking he understands a little better.

“No.” She shakes her head, “No. I didn’t know…”

He pulls her to him then, and she clings so tight he can’t even imagine what it was like; freefalling through time and just hoping she had enough concentration to land where she wanted. She did though; she made it.

She made it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done!!! I just want to say thank you to everyone who has been commenting, it really makes my day every time!


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